STAT3 and gastric cancer: The list of relevant interacting proteins retrieved from the STRING database includes STK24, AKT1, IL-6, CCND1 and STAT3 and is shown in Fig. 8C. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report that STK24 directly mediates IL-6/STAT3/CCND1/AKT1 signaling expression in gastric cancer.