ACTA1 and Cirrhosis: Overexpression of collagen I, a major ECM protein, is characteristic of liver cirrhosis and α‐SMA, a HSCs activation marker, signifies stellate cell activation and has been described as a marker to determine the degree of liver damage.19, 20 We further performed a correlative analysis between STAT3 and collagen‐I expression which showed a direct correlation between STAT3 expression and cirrhosis (Figure 1D).