Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Although the topic of the manuscript is interesting, the work cannot be accepted for publication due to the reasons listed below:

1. Inconsistent bacterial nomenclature. The genus name should be capitalized and the species name written in lowercase. All bacterial names should be italicized or underlined in the text. After the full name of a microorganism is written out once, the genus name may be abbreviated to its initial capital letter, provided no confusion with other genera arises.

2. Results are mixed with experimental description. In particular, the identification of compounds should be moved to Materials and Methods section. Moreover, Figure 1 should appear only in the Supporting Materials.

3. High MIC values. The MIC values reported are rather high. How do the authors propose achieving such high concentrations of the tested substances, for example, in urine?

4. Incorrect spacing between values and units. A space should always be included between numerical values and units.

5. Unclear and misleading conclusions. The conclusions should provide concrete and meaningful insights and currently they do not.

6. Unexplained abbreviations. More than half of the abbreviations used in the manuscript are not listed at the end of the manuscript, e.g., TSB, LBM, AU, PBS, and DMSO. Notably, “AU” appears in the text without any explanation.

To sum up, the manuscript is written carelessly, and I cannot recommend it for publication in Antibiotics.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

thank you for taking the time to read the manuscript and for your suggestions. I have revised the manuscript accordingly. You will find the detailed answers to your suggestions in the attachment.

Best Regards,

Christian Vogel

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript offers a compelling investigation into the impact of various natural and bioorganic compounds on the biofilm formation of P. aeruginosa on latex catheter surfaces. The subject matter is pertinent, and the results, especially the inhibitory effects of n-undecyl-α/β-L-fucopyranoside and terrein on P. aeruginosa ATCC 27853, are significant for the advancement of alternative biofilm-control methodologies. The manuscript is mostly well-organised, and the way the experiments were done is good. However, prior to acceptance, several minor issues necessitate clarification to enhance the clarity and interpretability of the results.

The authors should briefly explain why the detergent-based solubilisation systems (Soluplus, Prontosan) may have hidden the effects of curcumin and monolaurin, and how future research with different solubilisation methods could fix this problem. Also, a brief explanation of the possible biological reasons why the two P. aeruginosa strains reacted differently to undecylfucopyranoside could help the comparison. Finally, some parts of the conclusion could be made shorter to avoid repeating things and make the main contributions of the study stand out more clearly. Overall, the manuscript is scientifically sound and ready for publication after making some small changes to fix these problems.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

thank you for taking the time to read the manuscript and for your suggestions. I have revised the manuscript accordingly. You will find the detailed answers to your suggestions in the attachment.

Best Regards,

Christian Vogel

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

After reading and evaluating the manuscript entitled "Activity of natural substances and n-undecyl- α/β-L fucopyranoside against the formation of pathogenic biofilms by Pseudomonas aeruginosa", I suggested several important modifications that should be considered by the authors to improve the quality of this study.

1. In the abstract, authors should reduce methodological information and detail the results. More information about the main results obtained in this study needs to be provided to make the abstract more appealing to the reader.

2. Line 27: The conclusion of the abstract is very comprehensive. I suggest that the authors specify which substances evaluated in this study showed the greatest antibacterial potential.

3. Lines 48-49: Authors should cite the names of antibiotics currently used to treat biofilms and specify the severe adverse events they cause.

4. Authors should include a final paragraph in the manuscript introduction describing the objectives of this study. The objective must be clear and well defined.

5. Figure 1: All spectra shown in Figure 1 were included as supplementary material. I suggest enlarging the images in Figure 1 in the manuscript text and deleting the supplementary material to avoid repetition.

6. Lines 161-188: The authors should expand and improve the presentation of the discussion of the results obtained in this research. Many previously published studies have evaluated the potential of curcumin against P. aeruginosa.

7. Line 211: The authors should include the degree of purity of the curcumin and 1-monolaurin used in this study.

8. Lines 265-266: The authors should provide more details on the identification of n-Undecyl-α/β-L-fucopyranoside by nuclear magnetic resonance.

9. Lines 269-271: In the minimum inhibitory concentration methodology, authors must mention all compounds used in the study and their respective concentrations.

10. Piperacillin was the standard drug used as a positive control? This should be mentioned in the minimum inhibitory concentration methodology.

11. Why did the authors evaluate the antibiofilm activity of the P. aeruginosa PA01 strain using only the compound n-Undecyl-α/β-L-fucopyranoside? Wouldn't it be interesting to evaluate the potential of all other compounds against this specific strain?

12. The scientific name "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" should be written in italics. Authors should review this in the abstract and throughout the text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

thank you for taking the time to read the manuscript and for your suggestions. I have revised the manuscript. accordingliy. You will find the detailed answers to your suggestions in the attachment.

Best Regards,

Christian Vogel

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Abstract should be corrected. Please, add the concentration and percentage of growth inhibition/increase caused by N-undecyl-α/β-L-fuco-pyranoside, similar to the description of terrein.
2. Since the applied concentrations are rather high, cytotoxicity evaluation must be included.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for taking the time to read the manuscript and for your suggestions. I have accepted all your suggestions and revised the manuscript accordingly. My answers to your questions can be found in the attached PDF file.

Kind Regards,

Christian Vogel

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors responded to my comments and improved the quality of the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,   Thank you for taking the time to read the manuscript again. I have revised it for more clarity. According to the three aspects that you assessed as requiring optimisation, I have
revised the manuscript in parts to achieve greater completeness and clarity regarding
methods, results, figures, and tables.   Kind Regards,
Christian Vogel

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors did not include cytotoxicity evaluation as suggested; therefore I cannot recommend the manuscript for publication. The applied active concentrations are high, hence screening the effect of the compounds on uropathogenic and biofilm-forming makes no sense if they exhibit toxicity

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

 

Thank you for your professional assessment.

Naturally, it is crucial to determine potentially harmful side effects of terrein and n-undecyl-α/β-L-fucopyranoside on epithelial cells of the urogenital tract. Although terrein is considered non-toxic (reference [31 – safety data sheet - ] in the manuscript), we have mentioned the effects of terrein on breast cancer cells (reference [32] in the manuscript) as a possible indication of side effects. We consider bladder epithelial cells suitable for toxicity studies. We announced this as our next project in the discussion section of our manuscript, following a prior screening of the active substances terrein and n-undecyl-α/β-L-fucopyranoside on further P. aeruginosa strains.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to conduct cytotoxicity studies with terrein or n-undecyl-α/β-L-fucopyranoside on epithelial cells of the urogenital tract in the near future.

 

Kind Regards,

Christian Vogel