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million cancer deaths per year [1]. Despite improve-ments in the prevention and treatment of lung cancer, the overall 5-year survival rate remains at 15 % [2]. Ef-forts have been made to develop new treatment strat-egies. In recent years, rearrangements of the anaplastic large cell kinase (ALK) gene have been discovered in commonly EML4-ALK- with oncogenic activity [3-7]. Crizotinib, a potent and specific small molecule inhibitor of both ALK and c-MET tyrosine kinases [8-10], was ap-proved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with ALK gene rearrangement (ALK+). The FDA-approved Vysis ALK Break Apart FISH Probe Kit (Abbott Molecular) was mandated for ALK+ testing in crizotinib trials, which in a sense indicates that FISH analysis has been clinically validated. However, the * Correspondence