Extracellular Vesicles as Biomarkers in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: From Diagnosis to Disease-Free Survival

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

The review topic is focused on extracellular vesicles biomarker function in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma diagnosis to disease-free survival, although it is covered by information about other tumor-related factors such as cell-free DNA or circulating tumor cells. This part is valuable in the context of general biomarker screening in HNSCC, although is not fully relevant to the review topic. Beneficial would be highlighting extracellular vesicles as biomarkers in compared to other factors with its advantages and disadvantages. Moreover focusing on extracellular vesicles triggers to mention other components of their cargo with potential biomarker function. Table 1 and Figure 2, which demonstrate clinical significance of EV-related miRNA is transparent and useful, nevetheless it is expected to have similar information regarding to other EV components as indicate the topic of the review.

Specific comments:

Table 1 -  includes mistakes in dates of listed references

Line 146 - "The similar function that MSC-derived EVs promoted tumor growth with the one of MSCs was supposed by Zhu et al" - missing reference

Line 138-149, this paragraph is talking about exosomes derived from tumor microenvironment shaping cells, which promote tumor growth. The text mentioned only CAFs and MSCs. Is the TME modulated only by these cell types-derived exosomes?

 

Author Response

Thank you so much for all the suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

 

 Chen et al. have done a literature survey on EVs as a biomarker for carcinoma. This review paper is organised well and could be of an interest to a broad range of readers of this journal. However, there are a few issues that need to be addressed before suggesting for publication.

-          The overall English including grammar and syntax of this review paper would benefit from an editorial correction.

-          The “simple Summary” needs to be revised and elaborate on why EVs are a better biomarker for HNSCC application as opposed to other methods.

-          The text in figures are not legible, could the author increase the font size?

-          There is too much information in Figure.2 that could be presented in a format of a table.

-          The author should provide example and the current start of the art in using EVs for other cancer diagnosis such as doi.org/10.1002/adsr.202200039

-          It would be useful to include a section on the current methods of EVs isolation.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you so much for all the advice.  Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc