Vimentin is an important member of the intermediate filament (IF) proteins family, which has been found to be overexpressed in a variety of tumors. This paper overviews the progress in researches concerning vimentin as a novel molecular target for cancer therapy and the main contents include: the secretion and regulation of vimentin, and its subcellular distribution and export to cell surface; relationship between vimentin and cell signaling pathways; relations of vimentin with various cancers and the target sites of vimentin for drugs.