Screening for Colorectal Cancer Leading into a New Decade: The “Roaring ‘20s” for Epigenetic Biomarkers?
, Sara Ramalhete 1,2, Aryeh J. Price 3, Ramon Andrade de Mello 1,4,5, Ana D. Marreiros 1,2, Ricardo Pires das Neves 6,7,* and Pedro Castelo-Branco 1,2,8,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript "Colorectal cancer screening on the threshold of a new decade: is written in good English. I would recommend rephrasing the unusual terms in the Abstract, Introduction, Discussion and Conclusions sections. This is a comprehensive compilation work monitoring the knowledge in CRC screening and diagnosis in terms of describing its mechanisms, techniques/tests, novel and epigenetic biomarkers. I really enjoyed reading it. However, the authors did not use the latest findings in this review. I found only 1 paper from the current year, 1 paper from last year, and only 3 papers from 2019. This is a relatively small number of up-to-date sources out of all 118 references in the review manuscript. In addition, I have a few notes.
- I would recommend adding more recent papers and current studies.
- Abbreviations should be explained when first used, e.g. CTC, gFOBT.
- I recommend moving the reference to Figure 1 to line 135.
- It would be a good idea to place the reference to Table 1 on line 200.
- DCBE principle is missing - line 364.
- Add a short summary of the tests with information on which method is optimal for smaller polyps on line 378.
- Paragraph on line 400 provides no information, please delete it.
- The authors should go deeper and ask questions based on current knowledge and try to answer what is their proposed combination of tests - line 629, 639.
- Paragraph 652-6565 is redundant, please delete it.
- In section 5.1.3, the references are incorrectly numbered.
- Please, standardize the format of the references (with/without month).
- Please, add years to the references, e.g. 88, 90.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript is an excellent review of colorectal cancer screening. It included all the details of colorectal cancer carcinogenesis and resultant screening strategies.
The only correction I suggested will be page 3, lines 120-121. In general, the T category of TNM staging represents the size of the tumor, but in colorectal cancer, it represents the depth of the invasion regardless of the tumor size.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
