ALK and lung carcinoma: Over the past few years, the introduction of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-based target therapy dramatically improved the therapeutic efficacy for lung cancer patients with specific gene mutations (Califano et al., 2017; Hida et al., 2017; Peters et al., 2017; Kiura et al., 2018; Novello et al., 2018).