PIK3CA and colorectal cancer: However, these effects are not absolute and are also influenced by other factors such as mutation frequency, level, subclonal distribution, heterogeneity, homozygosity, background mutations, etc. PIK3CA mutations also result in changes in epigenetic regulation, leading to mutation-related phenotypic heterogeneity, which may further impact the autophagy, angiogenesis, migration, invasion, and immune escape of colorectal cancer cells (Ghodsinia et al., 2020).