EIF4EBP1 and lung carcinoma: To explore the effect of pharmacological VC on mTOR pathway activation, we treated lung cancer cells (H1299 and A549) with different concentrations of VC for 2 hours and examined the activation status of mTORC1 by assessing the levels of S6K, S6, and 4EBP1 phosphorylation [25, 26].