Objective:The expression of Hsp40 in epithelial ovarian cancer and its correlation with clinical pathology were investigated. Methods:The expression of Hsp40 was detected by immunohistochemistry in 45 cases of epithelial ovarian cancer and 20 cases of benign ovarian tumor and 20 cases of normal ovary. Sta-tistical analysis was done to correlate the expression of Hsp40 with pathological characteristics. Results:The expression of Hsp40 in epithelial ovarian cancer was significantly higher than benign ovarian tumor and nor-mal ovary, the positive rates were 62.2% ,25.0% and 20.0% respectively ( P <0.01 ). There was no signifi-cant correlation between the expression of Hsp40 and clinical stages, histological grades,with or without me-testasis, with or without residual tumor. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Log - rank analysis showed that the survival time in Hsp40 expression negative patients was significantly longer than those positive expression patients( P <0.01 ). Cox analysis showed residual tumor size was the only one covariant factor, the expres-sion of Hsp40 was not significantly relevant to prognosis. Conclusions. Hsp40 may play an important role in the occurrence and development of epithelial ovarian cancer.