Pharmacological studies in animals or cell lines and network research have shown that TCM can prevent metastasis of CRC to the liver by down-regulating the activation of cancer-associated fibroblasts mediated by CRC-derived ITGBL1-loaded extracellular vesicles (Li et al., 2022); thus, TCM has the unique characteristics of being multi-targeted and multi-linked, and may have a comprehensive therapeutic effect. Here, ITGBL1 is linked to cancer.