Objective To investigate the role of chemokine receptor CXCR7 in the development and progression of pancreatic carcinoma. Methods The short hairpin RNA (shRNA) targeting CXCR7 was designed and delivered into AsPC-1 pancreatic carcinoma cells to knock down CXCR7 expression. The cell proliferation, cell cycle, and apoptosis after CXCR7 knockdown was determined by MTT and flow cytometry, respectively. The invasive ability of pancreatic carcinoma cells was evaluated by using the Transwell system. Results Compared with the blank control group (BC group), transfection of AsPC-1 cells with CXCR7-shRNA resulted in a significantly decreased expression of CXCR7 at both mRNA and protein levels (P<0.05), and the ability of proliferation and invasion significantly decreased (P<0.05). Knockdown of CXCR7 also significantly increase apoptosis (P<0.05), induce cell cycle arrest at G0/G1 phase (P<0.05). Conclusions Taken together, the present study showes that the knockdown of CXCR7 expression may play an important role in pancreatic carcinoma development, invasion, and metastasis, CXCR7 may be a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of pancreatic carcinoma.