Abstract: Objective To investigate the expression of urokinase-type plasminogen activator （uPA） and characterize the association between uPA and tumor metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods We collected 48 primary hepatocellular carcinoma （HCC） tissues and their adjacent normal tissues. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction （QRT-PCR） was performed to detect the messenger RNA （mRNA） expression of uPA in primary HCC, and then analyzed the correlation between uPA expression and clinicopathological features and systemic inflammatory indicators of primary HCC, including systemic immune inflammation index （SII）, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio （NLR） and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio （PLR）. Further in vitro experiments performed to study the effect of uPA on migration and invasion. Results uPA was up-regulated in 27 of 48 HCC tissues （P<0.01） and uPA expression was associated with incomplete envelope, recurrence and metastasis of HCC （P<0.05）. uPA expression was positively correlated with tumor size （P=0.011）. We also found that the expression level of uPA was correlated with HCC systemic inflammatory indicators （NLR, PLR, SII）. Furthermore, we found that uPA can promote the migration and invasion of HCC cells in vitro. Conclusions uPA could be a clinical marker for the migration and invasion of HCC cells.