In cisplatin-resistant OSCC, TGF-β1 modulates the cancer cell stemness where it inhibited the tumor suppressor gene FOXO3a via AKT pathway, a non-canonical, SMAD-independent pathway, resulting in the increased expression of SOX2 and ABCG2, which are markers of stemness (Zhang et al., 2021). Here, AKT1 is linked to cancer.