MMP9 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Moreover, Spearman’s rank tests showed that the mRNA expression of CEP55 was significantly and positively correlated with the mRNA expression of MMP2 (R = 0.5025, p < 0.0001) and MMP9 (R = 0.244, p < 0.0001) in paired human HCC samples (Figure 4C).