In addition to producing proinflammatory factors, the PI3K/Akt pathway has been shown to suppress apoptosis via inactivation of caspase 3/7 and activation of B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) protein in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (Su et al., 2022). Here, AKT1 is linked to head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.