Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) can be driven to oncogenic activity by different types of mutational events such as point‐mutations, for example F1174L in neuroblastoma, and gene fusions, for example with echinoderm microtubule‐associated protein‐like 4 (EML4) in non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This evidence concerns the gene ALK and lung cancer.