Alshaker and colleagues demonstrated that leptin as an adipokine was able to induce upregulation of SPHK1 and in turn SPHK1 could contribute to leptin-induced STAT3 activity in breast cancer via transactivation of IL-6/gp130 (Alshaker et al., 2014; Alshaker et al., 2015). This evidence concerns the gene IL6 and breast carcinoma.