Objective To study the effects of hypoxia on adhesion and migration of ovarian carcinoma cell line Caov-3 in vitro. Methods The ovarian carcinoma cell Caov-3 was cultured under normoxic condition or in hypoxic condition. In vitro adhesion of Caov-3 on extracellular matrix fibronectin and matrigel was detected using MTT colorimetric assay. In vitro migration of Caov-3 on extracellular matrix matrigel was assayed with cellular migration test. Results In vitro cell adhesion experiment showed that, compared with the control cells, hypoxia increased cell adhesion to extracellular matrix matrigel and fibronectin by 17.1% and 15.2%, respectively. There were significant differences between the normal conditions and hypoxia (P