STAT3 and breast cancer: Li et al. (2021) reported that propofol could inhibit the ability of bladder cancer stem cells to self-renew by targeting the hedgehog pathway, thereby inhibiting bladder tumor development and recurrence. In breast cancer, Zhang et al. (2019) found that propofol could reduce mammosphere formation in tumor stem cells in vitro via the PD-L1/Nanog pathway, thereby inhibiting cancer cell recurrence and metastasis. Another study showed that propofol inhibited the expression of circNOLC1 to attenuate tumor stem cell function via miR-365a-3p/STAT3 signaling pathway in breast cancer.