MMP9 and cancer: It is important to note that carvacrol prevented metastasis in vivo, demonstrated by tumors less likely to spread through intrahepatic veins (Jayakumar et al., 2012) and preventing local spread of cancer cells by suppressing the expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9 proteins (Subramaniyan et al., 2014), and thymol decreased the number of lung metastatic lesions in vivo, suppressing the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway (Zeng et al., 2020).