Chronic Diseases Prevention Review Vol. 9 NO.35 2025

: Metastasis is the clinical expression of an ecological failure in which disseminating cancer cells encounter permissive immune, stromal, vascular and metabolic conditions rather than an inert distant organ. This review examines Chinese and Mongolian medicines through that ecological lens. Instead of treating herbal medicines as general cytotoxic agents, the review asks whether they can remodel the microenvironmental states that permit metastatic dissemination, immune escape, pre-metastatic niche formation, dormancy escape and distant colonization. We classified the literature into direct antimetastatic evidence, TME-remodeling evidence, and predictive evidence to avoid overinterpreting migration assays or network pharmacology predictions as proof of antimetastatic activity. Chinese medicine has a broader mechanistic base, especially in EMT, macrophage polarization, myeloid suppression, inflammatory signaling, angiogenesis and selected models of metastatic burden. Mongolian medicine offers a distinctive materia medica resource and plausible immunoinflammatory and vascular regulatory potential, but direct evidence linking classical Mongolian formulas to metastatic niche biology remains limited. The central argument is that a credible field must move from simple migration assays and network prediction toward orthotopic and spontaneous metastasis models, cell resolved microenvironmental profiling, spatial validation, pharmacokinetic exposure, quality control and clinically relevant recurrence or metastasis endpoints. Open Access Download (free) PDF Full article