To understand the genetic mechanisms underlying the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) metastasis, differences of genomic alter-ations between 10 pairs of primary HCC tumors and their matched metastatic lesions were analyzed by comparative genomic hybridization. Several chromosomal alterations including loss of 8p, 4q, 17p, and 19p, gain of 5p and high-level amplification of lq12-q22 were detected in two or more cases. The most significant finding is the loss of 8p which was detected in 8 metastatic tumors but only in 3 corresponding primary tumors(P=0.03). This result suggests that the deletion of chromosome 8p might contribute to the development of HCC metastasis. Another inter-esting result is the detection of a minimum high-lever amplification region at lq12-q22 in HCC. This result provides a candidate amplification region at lq12-q22 in HCC. This result provies a candidate amplification region in HCC for further study to identify amplified oncogenes related to the development or progression of HCC. Finally, this study provides a prac-ticable model to detect specific genetic alterations related to the tumormetastasis through comparing the primary tumor and its corresponding metastatic lesion using comparative genomic hybridization technique.