STAT3 and cancer: As a novel agent for cancer therapy, honokiol, targets multiple signaling pathways, including nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) (Ahn et al., 2006), signal transducers and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) (Leeman-Neill et al., 2010; Song et al., 2016) and mammalian target of rapamycin (m-TOR) (Lin et al., 2016), all of which have great relevance during cancer initiation and progression.