STAT3 and cancer: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is another inflammation-driven cancer (Zhai et al., 2023; Zhang S. et al., 2023; Zhang et al., 2023e), where inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-6 activate downstream targets including NF-κB, JNK, and STAT3, thereby promoting tumorigenesis (Czauderna et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2019; Kumari et al., 2016; Kitamura et al., 2017).