IL6 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Inaccordance with these previous reports, our study suggested that the BMSC-CMtreatment activated the STAT3 pathway and transcription of its target genes.However, to verify if this regulation of STAT3 signaling pathway is essential to theBMSC-CM-induced HCC cell invasion ability, further analysis is needed to verify therole and regulation mechanisms of IL-6/STAT3 pathway in BMSC-CM induced tumorprogression, such as the shRNA knockdown of STAT3 or the rescue experiment byoverexpressing IL-6.