STAT3 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Additionally, we found that knockdown of HPS did not alter both phosphorylation and total levels of STAT3 (Figure 2A), whereas we have shown previously that active KRAS/p-STAT3 increased HPS expression (Figure 1B–D), which is in agreement with the previous study that found that STAT3 and HNF1 bind to the HPS promoter and transcriptionally downregulate HPS in HCC [18].