STAT3 and hepatocellular carcinoma: The compound was found to induce apoptosis in HepG2 cells through the mitochondrial pathway (Li et al., 2011), inhibit tumor angiogenesis (Liu et al., 2011), induce ERS-mediated apoptosis and inhibition of human hepatoma cells (Xiao et al., 2016b) in the form of the nanoparticles, inhibit angiogenesis, cell migration, and cell invasion in human hepatoma cells by regulating STAT3 (Xiao et al., 2016a), and induce protective autophagy during apoptosis by inhibiting the Akt/mTOR pathway and activating JNK in human hepatoma cells (Zhang et al., 2018).