STAT3 and cancer: Two of the up-regulated ones were already known from previous studies in mammals to play important roles in SCI – hes5 and sox11 [56, 95, 149]; two additional ones (bcl6 and mllt11) were known from cancer studies as modulators of STAT3 [89, 99], which is a transcription factor known to play an important role in regulating inflammation-mediated responses during tissue regeneration.