STAT3 and hepatocellular carcinoma: There have been reports that demonstrated that some signaling pathway-mediated crosstalk between Mφ and HCC cells cause M2-TAM polarization, leading to HCC growth, migration and metastasis, such as IL-6/STAT3, Wnt/β-catenin, and NF-κB (Mano et al., 2013; Yan et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2018).