The Tumor-Specific Expression of L1 Retrotransposons Independently Correlates with Time to Relapse in Hormone-Negative Breast Cancer Patients
, Umberto Miglio 1,†, Sara Erika Bellomo 1,3, Carla Debernardi 2, Alberto Bragoni 1,2, Annalisa Petrelli 1, Eliano Cascardi 1,2, Silvia Giordano 1,3, Filippo Montemurro 1, Caterina Marchiò 1,2, Tiziana Venesio 1,* and Anna Sapino 1,2
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors presented an interesting research regarding L1 retrotransposons and breast cancer.
In general the paper was well-written and the data was obtained properly.
Just a few suggestions:
1. I would explain the abbreviation in the legend figure 1.
2. For Figure 1A, does the ORF1 and ORF2 values in the BC cell lines, correlates with their metastatic potential?
3. Table 1 - I suggest to add the standard deviation value together with the mean value
4. For the Suppl Figure 1, I suggest to add the p value
5. Figure 4A - the legend says: L1-low expressor, while the text and figure says high-expressor.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Berrino et al. in this article show that L1 reactivation was characteristic of tumor samples, in this case breast cancer samples, and that high expression is related with worst clinical characteristics in breast cancer, as basal-like PAM50 subtype, poorly differenciated tumors, high ki67 and high TILs in the tumor. In general, I think the article is very good and clearly shows the results obtained. I only have minor comments/suggestions:
- The authors should review the mention of the supplementary figures/Tables, since I have detected some errors (e.g. line 113; where the authors wrote Table S2 and it is Table S4). Please review and correct the errors.
- I would like the authors include ROC curves and calculate the AUC of L1 expression to demonstrate the value of L1 as a biomarker.
- In Table 2, the p-value of the multivariable analysis of tumor size is in bold, but this is not significant, the authors should remove the bold.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
cells-1744865 Review
The tumor specific expression of L1 retrotransposons independently correlates with time to relapse in hormone-negative breast cancer patients
This article is written well, but lacks in new knowledge and grounds. Therefore, I require Major Revision.
・Please clarify the purpose of this study in “Introduction” section.
・Please clearly define the evaluation of L1 retrotransposons.
・Please make a paper with logically necessary data, not the amount of data.
・Please validate from breast cancer intrinsic subtype (molecular).
・You should corroborate this with verification on cell lines.
・This paper has not been analyzed and discussion of the problem.
・In the analysis, please list the report by the statistician.
・And, please describe the discussion in more detail.
Minor point
・The sentence of this paper has many careful mention errors. Please review it.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
cells-1744865 Review
The tumor specific expression of L1 retrotransposons independently correlates with time to relapse in hormone-negative breast cancer patients
This paper has been improved in accordance with the instructions. I consider this manuscript acceptable.
