STAT3 and cancer: IL-6/STAT3 signaling pathway has been widely reported to play a pivotal role in tumorigenesis and aggressiveness of multiple cancers [24], which could be regulated by important tumor-related genes to mediate tumor growth or metastasis [25, 26], could also induced expression of key cancer-related factors to promote tumor progression [27, 28], but the function of IL-6/STAT3 signaling pathway in IHs has been less explored.