Although we have shown here that a representative breast tumor tissue has reciprocal expression of SHP-1 and p-STAT3 in cancer cells and adjacent non-cancer breast tissue (Figure 6), large immunohistochemistry-based studies are needed to address the role of SHP-1 expression in relation to p-STAT3 in such a heterogeneous disease comprehensively. Here, STAT3 is linked to breast neoplasm.