Extracellular Vesicles in Airway Homeostasis and Pathophysiology
, Alessandro Pitruzzella 1,2,*, Stefano Burgio 1, Maria Concetta Zarcone 3, Domenico Michele Modica 4, Francesco Cappello 1,5 and Fabio Bucchieri 1,6Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The review manuscript submitted is of high interest to the scientific community, is well organized and the language is mostly clear.
The figures presented are interesting schematic summaries of the pathologies, but the legends need to be improved.
The legends, besides the title, should briefly describe what we can see in the figures.
The acknowledgements section should be changed or removed.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the valuable suggestions. We apologize for the errors that were present and that we had missed during the revisions. Furthermore, we have modified point by point as requested.
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a nice review on airway extracellular vesicles, and I have only a couple of remarks on the content and a number of formal comments on the text.
- I wonder whether the use of the word “nanovesicles” in the title is justified, as the authors discuss about vesicles that are of larger dimensions. Wouldn’t “extracellular vesicles” be a more appropriate term?
- The following sentence does not read well (lines 87-90): “In recent decades it has been possible to demonstrate their involvement in a plethora of physiological processes aimed at maintaining, as well as the enormous variety of molecules transported, and receptors expressed on their surface [19].”
Here I recommend avoiding the phrase “physiological processes aimed at maintaining…”, as physiological processes do not really have an AIM.
- In line 104, the word “they” seems to refer to EVs produced by tumor cells, which is not what the authors mean, right? Wouldn’t it be better to write “…however, under physiological conditions other EVs perform…”
- Line 169, write “eosinophils-derived exosomes”.
- In the sentence “This novel research on extracellular vesicles, microvesicles and exosomes indicate how future therapies must target these components in the prevention of asthma pathogenesis”, the word “how” does not seem to be appropriate. Perhaps the authors meant to use “that” instead. Otherwise, it is unclear “how” the novel research indicates that vesicles, microvesicles and exosomes must be targeted.
- Please, make the figures larger. Several labels are too small.
- Please, add full explanations of the figures in the legends.
- The subtitle “COPD and nanovesicles in COPD pathogenesis” does not read well.
- Line 117, write “Patients” instead of “People”.
- Lines 178-179, the sentence “The pathology has remarkable facets and different levels of severity [47-48]” is not informative.
- Line 234, in the sentence “respiratory viruses that have evolved to use EVs as means of transport to spread infection”, please avoid the use of teleological language, viruses do not “use … to spread infection”. This implies that viruses do something with a purpose.
Please, check also the sentence in lines 249-251 and in line 288-290 “This carrier is used to conveying different molecules…”.
- Line 235, instead of “Even viruses, such as bacteria previously, are a source of COPD…”, please write “Even viruses, like bacteria, are a source of COPD…”.
- Line 234, why “Human”, instead of just Human?
- Line 256, change “reducing” to “reduce”.
- Line 259, write “In”.
- Line 264, as a curiosity, doesn’t the urinary epithelium produce EVs as well?
- Lines 284-286, the sentence “Although otherwise, they are characterized by airway inflammation, airflow reduction, and 285 airway remodeling.” Does not read well.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the valuable suggestions. We apologize for the errors that were present and that we had missed during the revisions. Furthermore, we have modified point by point as requested.
