Objective To summarize the current advancement of preoperative radiotherapy for rectal cancer. Methods Relevant literatures about current advancement of preoperative radiotherapy for rectal cancer published domesticly and abroad recently were collected and reviewed. Results The lower local recurrence rate and longer disease-free survival time were observed in preoperative radiotherapy， compared with postoperative radiotherapy for rectal cancer. The recurrence rate was higher in short-course radiotherapy， compared with conventionally radiotherapy for stageⅢrectal cancer， but there was no significant difference for stageⅡrectal cancer. The biology molecular such as p53， CEA， Cox-2， EGFR， and VEGF had shown to be radiosensitive. Conclusions The proposal of preoperative radiotherapy for rectal cancer， could be prone to conventionally radiotherapy. There are more screening targets for preoperative radiotherapy in extensive exploration of diverse radiosensitivity. Biology molecular， developed gene expression profiling， and gene chips for rectal cancer may contribute to the individualization treatment.