The enhancer is a special class of transcriptional regulatory elements in eukaryotic genomes. There are a large number of enhancer elements in eukaryotic genomes. Enhancers can interact with the promoters of target genes through the formation of chromatin loop，and regulate the transcription of target genes together with the promoters. A large number of studies have shown that genetic variations，epigenetic modifications and abnormal transcription factors can directly or indirectly lead to enhancer dysfunction or genome enhancer remodeling that are closely correlation to the occurrence and progression of malignant tumor. In recent years，the rapid development and update of high-throughput sequencing technology and database have strongly enhanced the depth and breadth of enhancer research. In this review，we briefly introduced and summarized the structural characteristics and the regulation mode of enhancers，and the formation mechanism of abnormal regulation in the process of tumorigenesis and development，as well as the main technical means of enhancer identification and common databases.