Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most malignant cancers and is the most frequent one in some regions in the world. Although it is a multistage disease, its genetic composition is not well understood. TGF(3 is shown to be a strong inhibitor of cell growth and during hepatocellular carcinogenesis there is an escape from the anti-proliferative effect of TGF(3. Smad2 protein is the mediator of response to TGFP and its gene is mutated in several cancers. To clarify the role of Smad2 in TGFP signalling in hepatocellular carcinoma we performed single-strandconformation-polymorphism (SSCP) analysis in five exons of Smad2 for 35 tumor samples and in C-terminal region for five hepatoma cell lines. Two alterations were found out of 35 samples and no abnormal expression or big deletions were observed in cell lines. Thus Smad2 might be involved at least a part of hepatocellular carcinomas.