Despite the major role of the AKT/PKB family of proteins in the regulation of many growth and survival mechanisms in the cell, and the increasing evidence suggesting that AKT disruption could play a key role in many human malignancies, no major mutations of AKT genes had been reported, until very recently when Carpten et al reported a novel transforming mutation (E17K) in the pleckstrin homology domain of the AKT1 gene in solid tumours.
Epidemiologic studies suggested that mutations of the PI3K/PTEN/AKT pathway genes are associated with cancer risk, yet no data are available for PTEN rs701848, PIK3CA rs2699887, and AKT1 rs2494752 polymorphism and breast cancer(BC) risk.
These data suggest that the rs2498794 polymorphism of the AKT1 gene is associated with a long smoking duration and may be involved in the predisposition to cancer when the smoking duration is short or the cigarettes per day is rate low.