STAT3 and B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia: We demonstrated that BMSCs were able to impair ibrutinib-induced in vitro CLL mortality (Figure 5), and the combination of JAK2/STAT3 inhibitors, either AG490 or Stattic, plus ibrutinib was able to counteract the pro-survival effect mediated by BMSCs and increase CLL mortality by almost 50% (Figure 5) probably inducing apoptosis in that portion of cells that ibrutinib had not been able to kill because, de facto, protected by microenvironment.