In terms of signaling pathways in gastric cancer cells, iron ions are involved in the regulation of AKT/mTOR (Xu et al., 2020), ERK (Geng and Wu, 2022), NF-κB (Yao et al., 2021), STAT3 (Zuo et al., 2018), Wnt (Wang et al., 2022), and other pathways, indicating their significant impact on the occurrence and progression of gastric cancer through activation or inhibition of these pathways. Here, STAT3 is linked to gastric cancer.