Profibrotic signaling through STAT3 phosphorylation and activation is associated with epigenetic alterations while inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in IPF fibroblasts (Korfei et al., 2018), and it may be enhanced by the lysine deacetylation of STAT3 depending on HDAC1, HDAC2, and HDAC3 (O'Shea et al., 2005; Gupta et al., 2012). Here, HDAC2 is linked to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.