In conclusion, we demonstrated that cigarette smoke extract and its derived carcinogen, benzo[α]pyrene, activated proto‐oncogene MET signaling through ligand‐independent pathway to dominate Akt activation, which may thereby lead to the EGFR TKI resistance in wild‐type EGFR‐expressing NSCLC cell line but not in mutant EGFR‐expressing NSCLC cell lines (Fig. 8). Here, EGFR is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.