Abstract： Objective To investigate the expression of β-catenin and Oct-4 in colonal carcinoma and explore the relationship with recurrence and metastasis after operation. Methods Immunohistochemical analysis was used to evaluate the expression of β-catenin and Oct-4.The correlation of β-catenin and Oct-4 expression with tumor cell differentiation,T stage,N stage and metastasis was analyzed.The gene expression of Oct-4 was examined by RT-PCR in 20 frozen tumor tissues and normal tissues adjacent to tumor.Results Thirty-five patients had metastasis. The positive rates of β-catenin and Oct-4 expression were significantly higher in metastasis group than in the non-metastasis group (65.71％ vs 31.11％,51.43 ％vs 13.33 ％,x2 =9.843,P =0.002,x2 =13.605,P =0.001).Expression of β-catenin and Oct-4 was not associated with differentiation,T stage or N stage.The positive expression rate of Oct-4 in colonal carcinoma tissues was significantly higher than that in normal tissues.Metastatic rates in patients with positive expression of β-catenin and Oct-4 was higher than that in negative expression.The survival analysis showed that time of metastasis was significantly different in two groups of patients (P ＜0.05).Conclusion The expression of β-catenin and Oct-4 in tumor tissues is related to metastasis of colonal cancer after surgery and might be used to predict metastasis of colonal cancer after operation.