MMP9 and hepatocellular carcinoma: As shown in Figure 6, the expression of EMP3 was significantly positive-correlated to the expression of p85 regulatory subunit of PI3K (R =0.3851, p < 0.001), p-Akt (R = 0.3789, p < 0.001), as well as uPA (R = 0.4986, p < 0.001) and MMP-9 (R = 0.3697, p < 0.001) in the tissue sections from HCC patients.