MMP9 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: As shown in Table 3, the overexpression of individual MMP-9 or TN-C was correlated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.019, χ2 = 5.49 and P = 0.021, χ2 = 5.23), vascular invasion (P = 0.049, χ2 = 3.87 and P = 0.024, χ2 = 5.07), hepatic metastasis (P = 0.009, χ2 = 6.47 and P = 0.003, χ2 = 8.63) and TNM stage (P = 0.019, χ2 = 13.56 and P = 0.012, χ2 = 14.73).