Phenotypic variation of an ALK-positive large cell neuroendocrine lung carcinoma with carcinoid morphology during treatment with ALK-inhibitors

Abstract

Rearrangement of the ALK gene and overexpression of ALK seems to occur very rarely in neuroendocrine lung tumors, with only 3 cases of atypical carcinoid and 1 large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) reported in detail until now.^1,2,3,4 Here, we report a case of an ALK-positive neuroendocrine lung tumor showing a variable phenotype during the course of treatment.

A pulmonary lesion with mediastinal adenopathies was detected in a 69-year-old, non-smoking female of Turkish origin during work-up for back pain. A very small amount of tumoral tissue was obtained through fine needle aspiration of a lymph node and stainings performed on paraffin-embedded tissue showed a very limited amount of tumoral tissue with a well-differentiated cytological aspect with regular nuclei.

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