STAT3 and gastric cancer: Zhou et al. (2016) also studied the mechanism of nitidine chloride against gastric cancer. The results showed that downregulation of STAT3 and c-myc and overexpression of miR-17-5p decreased side population after nitidine chloride administration. Subsequently, nitidine chloride decreased side population through inhibiting STAT3/c-myc signal via miR-17-5p in gastric carcinoma cells.