In vitro studies also showed that curcumin promotes the expression of autophagy related proteins LC3B-II and Beclin1, and inhibits the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase/Akt/mammalian target of the rapamycin (PI3K/Akt/mTOR) signaling pathway, which is one of the most important signal transduction mechanisms in alleviating pulmonary fibrosis (Di Tu et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2020). Here, MTOR is linked to pulmonary fibrosis.