Objective To investigate the expression of chemokine VCC-1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Methods RT-PCR was used to detect the VCC-1 mRNA expressions in 8 HCC cell lines,10 normal liver tissues and 42 HCC tissues.Result In HCC cell lines,the expressions of VCC1 mRNA were high in SUN 398,intermediate in SUN387,SUN449,SUN423,HepG2,PLC5,and low in Hep3B and Huh7.In HCC tissues,the expressions of VCC-1 mRNA could be found in tumor and adjacent tissues.In these 42 tissues,VCC-1 mRNA was highly expressed in 26 specimens of tumor tissues (61％,14.9±7.6 fold) and 16 specimens of adjacent tissues (39％,6.9±5.4 fold).VCC-1 mRNA was up regulated in tumor tissues (P＜0.01).The expression levels of VCC-1 mRNA in 2 specimens were related to tumor differentiation and tumor size (P＜0.05).In the 10 specimens of normal liver tissues,no expression was detected in 8 specimens and light expression in 2 specimens.The expression was lower compared with cell lines,cancer tissues and adjacent tissues (P＜0.01).In 3 cases of recurrence,VCC-1 was highly expressed in cancer tissues (20.1±2.3 fold).In 8 specimenswith tumor thrombosis,5 tissues showed highly expressed VCC-1 (17.3±4.5 fold) while 3 specimens showed low expression.Conclusion VCC-1 plays an important role in HCC,and it may be considered as a potential therapeutic target of HCC.