Although previous studies have reported increased tumor PD-L1 expression to be an unfavorable prognostic factor for NSCLC, the characteristics of the TIME and their prognostic values in ALK-rearranged NSCLC remain unclear (Zhang et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2022; Tian et al., 2023; Zhou et al., 2023). Here, ALK is linked to neoplasm.