In addition, treatment of flask-cultured NSCLC cells with the PTEN inhibitor bpV(HOpic) significantly upregulated the expression of phosphorylated AKT (Figure 3c), indicating that 3D fibrin gels stimulated the activation of the PTEN/AKT signaling pathway through integrin β1. The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is non-small cell lung carcinoma.