Abstract: Objective To investigate the expression of IL-17 and MMP-9 in non-small cell cancer of the Han and Uighur NSCLC patients,analyze the differentiation of expression and the relationship between them and the clinical significance. Methods The expresion of IL-17 and MMP-9 were detected in 30 cases in Han and 30 cases in Uighur and lung tissues as control by PV9000 immunohistochemical technique. Results The positive expression of IL-17 and MMP-9 was detected in 60 cases NSCLC was 78.3% and 80.0%,respectively.Which was significantly higher than that in adjacent non-tumor tissues (P<0.05).The positive expression of IL-17 was related with the size of the tumor,TNM staging and also related to lymph node metastasis(P<0.05).The positive expression of MMP-9 was related with the size of tumor and TNM staging,but there was not correlated to nationality,age,gender,pathologic types and differentiation.The survival rate between the Han and Uighur is no sense in this study.The survival rate was different between NSCLC tissues with positive and negative IL-17 and MMP-9 expression (P<0.05). Conclusion The higher expression of IL-17 and MMP-9 in NSCLC is not the main factor about the different ratio of Han and Uighur in our hospital;IL-17 and MMP-9 may play important roles in regulating NSCLC invasion and metastasis.Over expression of IL-17 and MMP-9 could act as a reference to evaluate unfavorable prognosis of NSCLC.