Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a pulmotrophic factor for the regeneration of injured pulmonary tissue. We investigated the role of HGF in basement membrane formation during wound healing by immortalized alveolar type II epithelial cells that could form a continuous basement membrane when they were cultured on collagen fibrils in the presence of entactin-contaminated laminin-1. Cells cultured with 5.0 ng/ml HGF neither formed a continuous basement membrane on collagen fibrils nor maintained a continuous basement membrane architecture on a basement membrane substratum. The cells showed increased secretion of matrix metalloproteinase-9 and urokinase-type plasminogen activator and the HGF-induced inhibition of basement membrane formation was attenuated by addition of 200 ng/ml tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase-1. Cells sequentially exposed to HGF and 1.0 ng/ml transforming growth factor-1 had enhanced basement membrane formation compared to that receiving these reagents in the reverse order or concurrently. HGF simultaneously stimulated proliferation and migration of the cells so that it advanced wound closure on the basement membrane substratum. The present results indicate that the role of HGF in wound healing is the stimulation of reepithelization, but this factor may also contribute to the degradation of the basement membrane.