The question about molecular risk in anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is mainly posed by the recent therapeutic advances: prior to the availability of ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) and other targeted therapies, metastatic NSCLC was a rapidly lethal disease with a median overall patient survival (OS) below one and a half years [1]. Here, ALK is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.