Objective To explore the effect of silencing neuronal cadherin (N-cadherin) on the proliferation, invasion, migration and epithelial-mesenchymal transition of ovarian cancer cells and its molecular mechanism. Methods Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression of N-cadherin protein in ovarian cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues adjacent to the cancer. The expression of N-cadherin in SKOV3 cells was silenced by RNAi technology. CCK-8 method, cell clone formation experiment and flow cytometry respectively detected the proliferation activity, colony forming ability and cell cycle distribution of each group of cells. Transwell experiment and cell scratch experiment respectively detected the invasion and migration ability of each group of cells. The real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR detected the mRNA expression levels of N-cadherin and E-cadherin in each group of cells. The immunocytochemical staining detected the protein expression levels of Ncadherin, E-cadherin, matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2) and matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP9) in each group of cells. Western blot detected the protein expression levels of MEK and ERK in each group of cells. 〖WTHZ〗Results Compared with normal tissues adjacent to cancer, N-cadherin was highly expressed in ovaria cancer tissues (P＜0.05). Compared with the blank control group and the empty vector group, after SKOV3 cells silenced the expression of N-cadherin, the proliferation activity of SKOV3 cells was inhibited (P＜0.05), the number of cell clone formation decreased (P＜0.01), and the cells developed S Phase block (P＜0.01), the number of cell invasion and migration were reduced (P＜0.01). In addition, the relative mRNA expression of N-cadherin and E-cadherin in SKOV3 cells decreased after silencing N-cadherin, while the relative mRNA expression of E-cadherin increased (P＜0.05), the positive staining of N-cadherin, MMP2 and MMP9 in the cells was weakened, the positive staining of E-cadherin increased, and the protein expression levels of MEK and ERK in the cells decreased (P＜0.05). Conclusion Silencing N-cadherin can inhibit ovarian cancer cell activity, cell clone formation, invasion, migration, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and block cells in S phase, the mechanism may be related to blocking the MEK/ERK signaling pathway.