The aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of c-FLIP [cellular FLICE-inhibitory protein, where FLICE is Fas-associated death domain (FADD)-like interleukin-1beta-converting enzyme] expression in gastric adenocarcinoma and its possible implications for the progression of the cancer. Expression of c-FLIP in 48 gastric adenocarcinomas and their normal counterparts was analysed by reverse transcriptase PCR, Western blotting and immunohistochemistry. In situ cell apoptosis was detected by TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labelling) assay. As a result, c-FLIP transcripts were constitutively expressed in gastric adenocarcinomas and their levels were significantly higher than those in matched normal tissues ( P < 0.01). Immunohistochemically, the c-FLIP protein was also found to be expressed in all gastric adenocarcinomas (48/48), and 68.8% (33/48) showed an intense immunostaining; in contrast, only 75% (36/48) of normal gastric mucosa showed positive staining and none of them immunostained intensely. The abundance of c-FLIP protein was significantly higher in carcinoma than in normal gastric mucosa (6.93 +/- 0.58 versus 3.19 +/- 0.26, P < 0.01) and showed a reverse correlation with apoptotic index in adenocarcinoma, but not in normal mucosa. In addition, abundance of c-FLIP was significantly associated with lymph node metastasis at both mRNA level ( P < 0.05) and protein level ( P < 0.01). Western-blot analysis showed that the expression levels of the long form of c-FLIP and the short form of c-FLIP in adenocarcinomas were 2.6-fold and 2.8-fold ( P < 0.01) higher than those in normal tissues respectively. However, no significant difference was found between the expression levels of the two isoforms in both adenocarcinomas or normal tissues. In conclusion, overexpression of c-FLIP is tumour specific, which may be one of the in vivo mechanisms by which tumour cells escape from apoptotic death during the malignant transformation, and plays an important role in lymph node metastasis of gastric adenocarcinoma, which ultimately contributes to the tumour progression.