ALK and thyroid gland carcinoma: In our cohort of patients we detected an increased in ALK gene copy number and amplification in both RT-PCR-positive and negative samples but none in the 4 cases with transcriptional upregulation of full-length ALK. Activating point mutations of full-length ALK occur in the pediatric malignancy neuroblastoma and in certain thyroid carcinomas [26,27,28]; however, sequencing of full-length ALK in our NSCLC cases revealed no evidence for oncogenic point mutations.