STAT3 and familial pancreatic carcinoma: To further determine the relationship between SOCS3 and pSTAT3, a panel of 9 pancreatic cancer cell lines were analyzed; we also observed highly activated STAT3 and lower expression of SOCS3 in most cell lines (Fig. 1d , Additional file 1: Figure S1B), suggesting that SOCS3 expression might be negatively correlated with that of pSTAT3 in PDAC.