In osteosarcoma and gliomas, EFEMP1 is overexpressed and promotes the invasion and metastasis of tumor cells in vitro and in vivo by activating the expression of MMP-2 and notch signaling, respectively (Hu et al., 2009, 2012; Wang et al., 2015), while in gastric cancer, endometrial carcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma and lung cancer, EFEMP1 is downregulated, and is proposed as a prognosis biomarker (Chen et al., 2014a; Kim et al., 2014; Nomoto et al., 2010; Yang et al., 2013; Yue et al., 2007; Zhu et al., 2014). The gene discussed is MMP2; the disease is hepatocellular carcinoma.