In summary, we identified a total of 101 DEPs in NPC cells with different metastatic potentials by iTRAQ-labeling combined with 2D-LC-MS/MS and found that the panel of the three proteins (RAN, SQSTM1 and TRIM29) could serve as novel potential biomarkers for predicting NPC metastasis, and high TRIM29 expression promoted NPC cell in vitro proliferation, migration and invasion and in vivo metastasis. The gene discussed is SQSTM1; the disease is nasopharyngeal carcinoma.