Abstract: Objective To find out miR-130a expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its impact on migration and invasion of hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods The expression levels of miR-130a in HCC and highly metastatic HCC cell lines (MHCC97-H, HCCLM3) were determined by qRT-PCR. Then the expression levels of miR-130a were down-regulated by miR-130a inhibitor in highly metastatic HCC cell lines and the impact on migration and invasion was testified by series of Transwell tests. And the expression changes of MMP-9 and MMP-2 were measured by Western Blot in order to discover the possible pathway of miR-130a in regulating the migration and invasion of HCC. Results Expression of miR-130a in hepatocellular carcinoma was significantly higher than the corresponding adjacent tissues (P=0.001). The miR-130a expression in HCC cell lines was significantly higher than in normal liver cells (P=0.000). Transwell results showed that, compared with control cells, migration and invasion of both MHCC97-H and HCCLM3 were significantly influenced by reducing the level of miR-130a when transfected with its inhibitor (P< 0.01). Western Blot results found that expression of MMP-9 and MMP-2 decreased profoundly when miR-130a were downregulated in MHCC97-H and HCCLM3 cell lines (P< 0.01). Conclusion This study demonstrates that miR-130a promotes the process of EMT in liver cancer cells by certain signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms, resulting in increased migration and invasion of liver cancer cells. The target genes and the corresponding signal pathways of miR-130a are worthy of further study. miR-130a may become one of the molecular therapy targets of liver cancer.