Acute myeloid leukemia（AML）is a malignant hematopoietic stem cell disease characterized by clonal expansion of abnormally differentiated myeloid blasts. It mainly occurs in the elderly，and the median age at diagnosis is 68 years old. The current treatment is intensive induction chemotherapy with or without allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation，but this method cannot be applied to elderly patients who account for more than 50% of AML patients. Epigenetic alterations play an important role in the pathogenesis of AML，and these epigenetic alterations have become targets for the development of new anti ⁃AML drugs. This article reviews the research progress of DNA methylation and histone modification in epigenetics and the research achievements of drug therapy.