Our results indicated that almost 76% of primary HCC tumors expressed lower levels of E-cadherin compared with the matched adjacent non-tumor tissues (p < 0.05); however, there were no significant differences in the expression levels of integrin β1, β3, β4, β7, laminin β3 and Snail (p > 0.05, Additional file 3: Figure S2). Here, CDH1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.