Ardisia Crenata Radix is a traditional Chinese medicine, which belongs to Myrsinaceae, and its main components are coumarins, saponins, flavonoids and volatile oil. Bergenin, ardisicrenoside A, ardisicrenoside B,ardisiacripin A,ardisiacripin B and embelin are active anticancer compounds with the in-depth study of the anti-tumor effect of Ardisia Crenata Radix. They show high potential in oral cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, liver cancer, colon cancer, bladder cancer, cervical cancer and leukemia mainly through inducing tumor cell apoptosis, increasing tumor cytotoxicity, inhibiting cell proliferation, inhibiting tumor cell metastasis and migration, and inducing cell regulatory enzyme cascade reaction. However, the preclinical experimental data of cinnabar root anti-tumor mechanism are lack of high-quality, multi-sample and multi-repeated randomized controlled trials, and the clinical research data are lack of tumor prognosis, pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetic data. Accurate research experiments and clinical trials should be designed to further explore the pharmacological effects of mining cinnabar root.