Abstract: Cancer gene therapy is a way to treat cancer at the gene level which is one of the effective methods for cancer therapy. But, there are still some outstanding problems, for example, the targeting of gene expression. Recent researches confirm that the specific promoter can improve the targeting in gene therapy. The promoter is a region of DNA which can initiates transcription of a particular gene. The specific promoter only can be activated in certain tissue or tumor. Based on the recent studies in this field, this article will introduce types and functions of specific promoters, which has been investigated in cancer gene therapy.