AXL and metastatic neoplasm: AXL, a member of the Tyro3-AXL-Mer (TAM) receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) family, has emerged as a promising therapeutic target for lung cancer (Zhang et al., 2018; Linger et al., 2010) frequently overexpressed in metastatic tumors, AXL is strongly associated with resistance and poor survival outcomes (Bae et al., 2015; Byers et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2014).