The aim of our study was to investigate the general mechanism of spinal metastases from five different primary cancers: lung cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer.From microarray analysis and validation by real-time polymerase chain reaction, CX3C chemokine ligand 1 (CX3CL1) appeared to be a potential chemokine widely involved in the process of spinal metastases. Further studies revealed that, compared with normal controls, serum samples from patients with spinal metastases from the lung (P < 0.01), kidney (P < 0.05) and prostate (P < 0.05) contained significantly higher levels of CX3CL1, whereas those from patients with spinal metastases from the liver and breast had a tendency to contain higher levels of CX3CL1 but without significance. Immunohistochemical staining for the expression of CX3C chemokine receptor 1 (CX3CR1), the receptor for CX3CL1, in all spinal metastases samples showed negative staining.Cancellous bone in the spine from patients with and without spinal metastases was collected for mRNA microarray study, and then differentially expressed mRNAs related to chemokines were further confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the serum level of the selected chemokines and immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression level of corresponding receptors in tumor.Our present study showed that CX3CL1 is associated with the process of spinal metastases from different primary cancers.