AXL and nonpapillary renal cell carcinoma: 2010). High expression of AXL and its pathway can be detected in various cancers including acute myeloid leukemia, prostate, breast, lung, and skin cancers (Axelrod and Pienta 2014). AXL, along with MERTK and TYRO3, is a member of the TAM receptor family (Korshunov 2012). Binding of GAS6 leads to the oligomerization of AXL with tyrosine phosphorylation and activation of a down‐stream signaling cascade (Jorda et al. 2005). AXL‐mediated EMT is known to be important for ccRCC progression (Yu et al. 2015; Zhou et al. 2016b).