STAT3 and breast cancer: This signaling pathway involving NF-κB/IL-6/STAT3 has been demonstrated to be important in the pathogenesis of various epithelial cancers associated with inflammation, especially gastrointestinal cancer and breast cancer (Naugler and Karin, 2008; Grivennikov et al., 2009; Iliopoulos et al., 2009; Rakoff-Nahoum and Medzhitov, 2009).