In solid tumours, a series of targets that are crucial for first line treatment choice in the metastatic setting, such as EGFR mutations, ALK, ROS1 fusions in lung adenocarcinomas, BRAF mutations in melanomas, and KRAS mutations in colorectal carcinomas, have demanded the introduction of clinical routine investigation of a minimum set of genes into the diagnostic practice [1,2,3]. The gene discussed is ALK; the disease is colorectal carcinoma.