Abstract: Colorectal cancer(CRC)is one of the common malignant tumors of the digestive tract, and its morbidity and mortality are increasing year by year, which seriously threatens human health. The phenotypic evolution of colorectal cancer has gone through two stages(adenoma-adenocarcinoma), and its occurrence and development are the accumulation process of a series of genetic and epigenetic events. Studies have found that epigenetic changes play a more important role in the initiation and progression of colorectal cancer. In addition, because abnormal changes in epigenetic regulation usually occur in the early stages of malignant tumors, they can be used as molecular markers for early diagnosis to improve the accuracy of diagnosis. In recent years, epigenetic therapy has achieved remarkable effects in the treatment of patients with malignant hematological diseases such as primary and refractory relapsed myelodysplastic syndromes, and clinical research in malignant solid tumors such as colorectal cancer is also widely explored.

Key words: colorectal cancer, epigenetics, DNA methylation, histone modification, non-coding RNA