Tissue-derived exosome proteomics identifies promising diagnostic biomarkers for esophageal cancer

  1. Dingyu Rao
  2. Hua Lu
  3. Xiongwei Wang
  4. Zhonghong Lai
  5. Jiali Zhang
  6. Zhixian Tang  Is a corresponding author
  1. Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Gannan Medical University, China
  2. The First Clinical School of Medicine of Southern Medical University, China
  3. Department of Anesthesiology, Longhua District Central Hospital, China
  4. Department of Traumatology, First Affiliated Hospital of Gannan Medical University, China
  5. The First School of Clinical Medicine, Gannan Medical University, China

Peer review process

This article was accepted for publication as part of eLife's original publishing model.

History

  1. Version of Record updated
  2. Version of Record published
  3. Accepted
  4. Received

Decision letter

  1. Yongliang Yang
    Reviewing Editor; Dalian University of Technology, China
  2. Caigang Liu
    Senior Editor; Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, China

In the interests of transparency, eLife publishes the most substantive revision requests and the accompanying author responses.

Decision letter after peer review:

Thank you for submitting your article "Tissue-derived exosome proteomics identifies promising diagnostic biomarkers for esophageal cancer" for consideration by eLife. Your article has been reviewed by 2 peer reviewers, and the evaluation has been overseen by a Reviewing Editor and Caigang Liu as the Senior Editor. The reviewers have opted to remain anonymous.

The reviewers have discussed their reviews with one another, and the Reviewing Editor has drafted this to help you prepare a revised submission.

Essential revisions:

1) The manuscript lacks an in-depth description and discussion of the results. The authors should elaborate in the Discussion section.

2) The authors need to conduct a cellular functional assay to clarify how CD54 can impact the occurrence and development of esophageal cancer.

3) The manuscript needs extensive language editing as well.

Reviewer #1 (Recommendations for the authors):

Comparative proteomic analysis of exosomes derived from cancerous and paracancer tissues in eight pairs of patients with esophageal cancer was performed to identify the candidate protein CD54. In addition, the study demonstrated that CD54 is a potential diagnostic marker for esophageal cancer. The study makes sense.

1. The manuscript lacks a visual flow chart of the entire research, which is necessary to make it easier for readers to understand.

2. The discussion part is not deep enough, and more content is needed to explore the significance of this research.

3. The writing of the whole manuscript still needs to be revised, focussing on areas such as grammar, and some other writing mistakes.

Reviewer #2 (Recommendations for the authors):

This study provides a new idea for liquid biopsy of esophageal cancer. As the information carrier of cell secretion, exosomes can well reflect the changes in the tumor microenvironment. And compared to tissue biopsy, liquid biopsy has the advantages of repeatability and being non-invasive. However, this study only focuses on diagnostic value, and the mechanism of action of extracellular vesicle CD54 on esophageal cancer cells is still unclear.

1. The inclusion and exclusion criteria for collecting plasma from patients were not reflected in the manuscript.

2. The discussion in the article did not provide a more in-depth description of the experimental results, which needs to be supplemented.

3. If researchers can complement the cell function assays, it will make the experimental results more convincing to further clarify how CD54 influences the occurrence and development of esophageal cancer.

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.86209.sa1

Author response

Essential revisions:

1) The manuscript lacks an in-depth description and discussion of the results. The authors should elaborate in the Discussion section.

We thank the Editor for this suggestion. We have added some content to the Discussion section that we believe can make the article more engaging.

2) The authors need to conduct a cellular functional assay to clarify how CD54 can impact the occurrence and development of esophageal cancer.

We truly appreciate that the Editor point out this problem. We spent close to three months adding the specific functions of CD54 in EC, which are described in the "Reduced CD54 reduces EC proliferation and migration" section of the manuscript (Figure 8).

3) The manuscript needs extensive language editing as well.

We thank the Editor for this suggestion. We had a professional make changes to our manuscript voice. We believe the quality of the manuscript has been substantially improved.

Reviewer #1 (Recommendations for the authors):

Comparative proteomic analysis of exosomes derived from cancerous and paracancer tissues in eight pairs of patients with esophageal cancer was performed to identify the candidate protein CD54. In addition, the study demonstrated that CD54 is a potential diagnostic marker for esophageal cancer. The study makes sense.

1. The manuscript lacks a visual flow chart of the entire research, which is necessary to make it easier for readers to understand.

We thank the Reviewer for this suggestion. We added a visual flowchart of the entire study to the manuscript (figure1 A).

2. The discussion part is not deep enough, and more content is needed to explore the significance of this research.

We thank the Editor for this suggestion. We have added some content to the Discussion section that we believe can make the article more engaging.

3. The writing of the whole manuscript still needs to be revised, focussing on areas such as grammar, and some other writing mistakes.

We thank the Editor for this suggestion. We had a professional make changes to our manuscript voice. We believe the quality of the manuscript has been substantially improved.

Reviewer #2 (Recommendations for the authors):

This study provides a new idea for liquid biopsy of esophageal cancer. As the information carrier of cell secretion, exosomes can well reflect the changes in the tumor microenvironment. And compared to tissue biopsy, liquid biopsy has the advantages of repeatability and being non-invasive. However, this study only focuses on diagnostic value, and the mechanism of action of extracellular vesicle CD54 on esophageal cancer cells is still unclear.

1. The inclusion and exclusion criteria for collecting plasma from patients were not reflected in the manuscript.

We thank the Reviewer for this suggestion. CT examinations were performed on all patients, and clinical signs, symptoms, and features were obtained from electronic medical records. All candidates were excluded from other diseases.

2. The discussion in the article did not provide a more in-depth description of the experimental results, which needs to be supplemented.

We thank the Editor for this suggestion. We have added some content to the Discussion section that we believe can make the article more engaging.

3. If researchers can complement the cell function assays, it will make the experimental results more convincing to further clarify how CD54 influences the occurrence and development of esophageal cancer.

We truly appreciate that the Editor point out this problem. We spent close to three months adding the specific functions of CD54 in EC, which are described in the "Reduced CD54 reduces EC proliferation and migration" section of the manuscript (Figure 8).

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.86209.sa2

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Dingyu Rao
  2. Hua Lu
  3. Xiongwei Wang
  4. Zhonghong Lai
  5. Jiali Zhang
  6. Zhixian Tang
(2023)
Tissue-derived exosome proteomics identifies promising diagnostic biomarkers for esophageal cancer
eLife 12:e86209.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.86209

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.86209