Although we and other groups have showed that an aberrant cytoplasmic localization of hnRNP K was correlated with a poor prognosis in many tumors including NPC [3,5,44], in this study, we found that the nuclear but not the cytoplasmic hnRNP K is significantly correlated with MMP12 expression level. This evidence concerns the gene MMP12 and nasopharyngeal carcinoma.