pAKT pathway activation is associated with PIK3CA mutations and good prognosis in luminal breast cancer in contrast to p-mTOR pathway activation

Numerous studies have focused on the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway in estrogen receptor positive (ER) breast cancer (BC), as a linear signal transduction pathway and reported its association with worse clinical outcomes. We developed gene signatures that reflect the level of expression of phosphorylated-Serine473-AKT (pAKT) and phosphorylated-Serine2448-mTOR (p-mTOR) separately, capturing their corresponding level of pathway activation. Our analysis revealed that the pAKT pathway activation was associated with luminal A BC while the p-mTOR pathway activation was more associated with luminal B BC (Kruskal–Wallis test p < 10⁻¹⁰). pAKT pathway activation was significantly associated with better outcomes (multivariable HR, 0.79; 95%CI, 0.74–0.85; p = 2.5 × 10⁻¹⁰) and PIK3CA mutations (p = 0.0001) whereas p-mTOR pathway activation showed worse outcomes (multivariable HR,1.1; 95%CI, 1.1–1.2; p = 9.9 × 10⁻⁴) and associated with p53 mutations (p = 0.04). in conclusion, our data show that pAKT and p-mTOR pathway activation have differing impact on prognosis and suggest that they are not linearly connected in luminal breast cancers.