STAT3 and neoplasm: Our sequencing results also showed that many differentially expressed genes were mainly related to tumor invasion and metastasis, apoptosis, and angiogenesis, and overexpression of TGFBR3 could inhibit the expression of the above-related genes, including FAT3, RUNX1T1, MMP19, LOXL4, SNAI1, SEMA5A, TGFB2, WNT2B, BMP4, CDH2, MCAM, GDF15, GFRA1, and THBS1, etc. Among them, GDF15 is significantly down-regulated in the TGFBR3 overexpression group, which is consistent with previous studies reporting that GDF15-induced STAT3 can promote thyroid cancer invasion (45).