STAT3 and cancer: In recent years, the Janus kinase 1/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (JAK1/STAT3) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) kinase (MEK)/ERK signaling pathways have been widely reported to involve in cancer development (Kang et al., 2011; Deng et al., 2018; Gao et al., 2019; Cui et al., 2020).