MTOR and pulmonary fibrosis: The activation of Akt is facilitated through the regulation of its downstream proteins, such as GSK-3β, mTOR, HIF-1α, and NF-κB, which are implicated in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis (Qin et al., 2021; Peng et al., 2022; Xu et al., 2022).