This article reviews the role of E-cadherin expression in the regulation of tumor metastasis. Recently,increasing studies on the regulation of E-cadherin in tumor metastasis have made considerable progress, especially on gene modification and transcriptional silence. The latest studies indicate that differential expression of microRNAs might be crucial in promoting metastasis and invasion via affecting transcription and expression of E-cadherin,which may be beneficial to develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic approach for metastasis. Clarifying the sophisticated regulation is not only of theoretical significance in deepening the molecular mechanism of cancer metastasis, but also of practical value at establishing normalized diagnostic and therapeutic systems and designing novel targeted drugs.