An upregulated level of pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6 was found in the serum of HCC patients (Xu et al., 2021), and the IL-6/STAT3 signaling pathway has been frequently shown to be constitutively activated in HCC patients, which is associated with poor prognosis (Li et al., 2023a), affecting activities of anti-apoptosis, angiogenesis, proliferation, invasion, metastasis, and drug resistance of HCC cells (Xu et al., 2021). The gene discussed is STAT3; the disease is hepatocellular carcinoma.