Platycodin D Alleviates High-Glucose-Aggravated Inflammatory Responses in Oral Mucosal Cells by PI3K/mTOR Pathway
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
The manuscript submitted by Liu et al. approaches a potential interestinf topic regarding the link between the level of glucose and some mediators of the inflammatory responses.
I hope that my remarks will be useful in order to improve the quality of the paper.
Line 11 - please be more specific. What oral disease are you referring to?
Lines 12-13 - Needs rephrasing as the statement might be misleading in an abstract.
Line 16 - The same questions: Which oral disease?
Line 19 - Where these levels where measured? (saliva, crevicular fluid etc?)
Line 28 - 1. Introduction (technical error)
Line 29 - 2. Materials and Methods (technical error)
Lines 29-30 - Needs reprhrasing
Line 74 - More clarifications are required in order to allow the replication of the study
Lines 73, 85, 95, 104, 114, 118 - Subtitles are missing
Line 119 - Statistical method requires a more elaborated description
Line 124 - Missing chapter number like "3. Results"
Lines 125, 137, 150, 162, 172 - missing subchapters numbers like 3.1, 3.2 etc.
Line 183 - Discussion part is insufficient
There is no conclusion part at all. It is essential to emphasize the practical impact of your research.
Best regards!
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope to meet with approval.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the revised manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
The point-by-point response to the comments is given below. (Reviewer's comments in blue, reply portion are black in the paper).
Reviewer 1
Dear Authors,
The manuscript submitted by Liu et al. approaches a potential interesting topic regarding the link between the level of glucose and some mediators of the inflammatory responses.
I hope that my remarks will be useful in order to improve the quality of the paper.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We tried our best to improve the manuscript as much as possible according to the opinions of the reviewers without changing the structure of the paper.
Line 11 - please be more specific. What oral disease are you referring to?
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the specific disease “Oral mucosal diseases account for an increasing proportion of human diseases.” according your suggestion.
Lines 12-13 - Needs rephrasing as the statement might be misleading in an abstract.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the specific disease “Among the many common risk factors that cause oral diseases and systemic diseases, dietary factors, especially high sugar is particularly prominent.” according your suggestion.
Line 16 - The same questions: Which oral disease?
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the questions in manuscript according your suggestion.
Line 19 - Where these levels where measured? (saliva, crevicular fluid etc?)
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. The cells supernatant was collected to measure the levels of TNF-α, IL‑1β, IL‑6 and IL‑8. We have revised the questions in manuscript materials and methods according your suggestion.
Line 28 - 1. Introduction (technical error)
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the questions in manuscript.
Line 29 - 2. Materials and Methods (technical error)
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the questions in manuscript.
Lines 29-30 - Needs rephrasing
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the questions in manuscript.
The oral cavity is an indispensable organ for people to engage in various social activities in daily life. Healthy oral tissue is the foundation of our happy life, while any impairment would lead to reducing the quality of life vastly.
Line 74 - More clarifications are required in order to allow the replication of the study
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have supplemented the full culture conditions in the manuscript. “Normal oral mucosal cells were purchased from Shanghai Anwei Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China); the cells were cultured in containing 5 % CO2 at 37 °C, in a basal culture medium DEME (Gibico USA) containing 100 μg/mL streptomycin, 100 U/mL penicillin, pH 7.2, and 10 % fetal bovine serum (FBS).”
Lines 73, 85, 95, 104, 114, 118 - Subtitles are missing
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We corrected all subtitles in manuscript.
Line 119 - Statistical method requires a more elaborated description
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the statistical method. We used SPSS (version 20.0 for Windows) for all statistical analyses. For quantitation of gene expression, we used the comparative CT method (2-ΔΔCT). All results are expressed as means ± SD. Logarithmic transformations of the data were made when necessary to fulfil the conditions of the analysis of variance, but data are shown in their decimal values for clarity. Using the one-way ANOVA to detected the multiple comparison, and the LSD post-hoc comparisons the differences between the groups were analyzed. Results were considered statistically significant when p < 0.05.
Line 124 - Missing chapter number like "3. Results"
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We corrected all chapter in manuscript.
Lines 125, 137, 150, 162, 172 - missing subchapters numbers like 3.1, 3.2 etc.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We corrected all subtitles in manuscript.
Line 183 - Discussion part is insufficient
There is no conclusion part at all. It is essential to emphasize the practical impact of your research.
Best regards!
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the Discussion in conjunction with other reviewers' comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
The article by Bincheng et al describes the activity of Platycodin D on mucosal cells in a high glucose media. While the described results may be of interest for oral diseases treatment, it is judged that the article lies out of the scope of the Journal and should be published in a more appropriate one.
Also, several aspects are to be addressed in order to improve its quality.
- The introduction should be corrected in order to give a clearer presentation of the work. From the logical point of view, lines 49-58 should be after 59-67.
-
Lines 80-84, the description of the procedures is messy and unclear.
-
Line 90. Misstype 0.05% DMSO0.05
- More than half of the Discussion section is dedicated to published data: only 9 of 63 lines are related to the obtained results. The results are described but barely discussed.
- The conclusion section is missing, and no conclusions are made except that "t further studies would still be needed" and "these findings could as of now, provide a novel strategy in the treatment of oral diseases". In the present form, the article looks like big Communication rather than a full Article.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope to meet with approval.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the revised manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
The point-by-point response to the comments is given below. (Reviewer's comments in blue, reply portion are black in the paper).
Reviewer 2
The article by Bincheng et al describes the activity of Platycodin D on mucosal cells in a high glucose media. While the described results may be of interest for oral diseases treatment, it is judged that the article lies out of the scope of the Journal and should be published in a more appropriate one.
Also, several aspects are to be addressed in order to improve its quality.
The introduction should be corrected in order to give a clearer presentation of the work. From the logical point of view, lines 49-58 should be after 59-67.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have corrected the lines.
Lines 80-84, the description of the procedures is messy and unclear.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the description in manuscript.
Line 90. Misstype 0.05% DMSO0.05
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have corrected the lines.
More than half of the Discussion section is dedicated to published data: only 9 of 63 lines are related to the obtained results. The results are described but barely discussed.
The conclusion section is missing, and no conclusions are made except that "t further studies would still be needed" and "these findings could as of now, provide a novel strategy in the treatment of oral diseases". In the present form, the article looks like big Communication rather than a full Article.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised the Discussion in conjunction with other reviewers' comments.
Reviewer 3 Report
The study is based on elisa assays to assess the changes in the levels of interlukines following the administration of platycodin d to oral mucosal cells. Data should be supported by western analysis especially if you want to demonstrate the involvement of the PI3k pathways
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope to meet with approval.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the revised manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
The point-by-point response to the comments is given below. (Reviewer's comments in blue, reply portion are black in the paper).
Reviewer 3
The study is based on elisa assays to assess the changes in the levels of interlukines following the administration of platycodin d to oral mucosal cells. Data should be supported by western analysis especially if you want to demonstrate the involvement of the PI3k pathways.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. Based on your comments, we performed a WB analysis and the results showed similar trends to the current results.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for the revised version. I consider that the paper can be published now.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. Thanks very much for your kind work and consideration on publication of our paper. On behalf of my co-authors, we would like to express our great appreciation to reviewers.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors corrected some of the highlighted issues but still need to work on the structure of the manuscript.
The Conclusion part is completely missing.
It is uncelar why one of the authors was replaced by the other.
Affiliation 4 now is not necessary.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope to meet with approval.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the revised manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
The point-by-point response to the comments is given below. (Reviewer's comments in blue, reply portion are black in the paper).
1. The Conclusion part is completely missing.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We tried our best to improve the manuscript as much as possible according to the opinions of the reviewers without changing the structure of the paper. We have revised the Discussion in manuscript.
2. It is uncelar why one of the authors was replaced by the other. Affiliation 4 now is not necessary.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. Because the Affiliation 4 provide us with a lot of help, including editing the manuscript, experiments, and funding.
Reviewer 3 Report
Data relating to westerns should be included at least in the supplementary. Without the support of these data the conclusions are too weak
Author Response
Data relating to westerns should be included at least in the supplementary. Without the support of these data the conclusions are too weak
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. Based on your comments, we performed a WB analysis and the results showed similar trends to the current results. The results have shown in Fig S1.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript can be acepted in present form
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. Thanks very much for your kind work and consideration on publication of our paper. On behalf of my co-authors, we would like to express our great appreciation to reviewers.
Reviewer 3 Report
the presented western blotting is not acceptable in this form because it lacks the molecular weights and antibodies used.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Platycodin D alleviates high glucose-aggravated inflammatory responses in oral mucosal cells by PI3K/mTOR pathway” (No: coatings-1508501). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and made corrections which we hope to meet with approval.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the revised manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper.
The point-by-point response to the comments is given below. (Reviewer's comments in blue, reply portion are black in the paper).
1. The presented western blotting is not acceptable in this form because it lacks the molecular weights and antibodies used.
Response to reviewer: Thanks for your suggestion. We have supplemented the antibody information of WB in the manuscript Materials and Methods, and the protein molecular weights has been marked in the figure.
