In the present study, extending beyond our previous investigation on lung cancer PD‐L1+ CTCs and CTECs [17], we took advantage of the EpCAM‐independent subtraction enrichment (SE) strategy [11, 26, 36] to enrich heterogeneously sized nonhematologic circulating rare cells in non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, followed by comprehensive phenotypic and karyotypic molecular characterization of CD31− CTCs and CD31+ CTECs performed by the integrated immunostaining fluorescence in situ hybridization (iFISH) [17, 37]. This evidence concerns the gene PECAM1 and non-small cell lung carcinoma.