AKT1 and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: By extracting CpG probes of autophagy-related genes in PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and testing these biomarkers using the same criteria aforementioned, again, we observed 35 pairs of CpG probes with significant G × G interactions in discovery and validation phases, which could be potential drug target therapeutics to overcome autophagy in HNSCC (Additional file 1: Table S6).