Glycans unique to the relapse-prone subset within triple-negative breast cancer as revealed by lectin array-based analysis of surgical specimens

PONE-D-21-03731

Dear Professor Irimura,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Lu-Gang Yu, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

The study was well designed and well executed, data analysis was careful and the conclusion was supported by the results.

Journal Requirements:

1. We note that you are reporting an analysis of a microarray, next-generation sequencing, or deep sequencing data set. PLOS requires that authors comply with field-specific standards for preparation, recording, and deposition of data in repositories appropriate to their field. Please upload these data to a stable, public repository (such as ArrayExpress, Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), NCBI GenBank, NCBI Sequence Read Archive, or EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (ENA)). In your revised cover letter, please provide the relevant accession numbers that may be used to access these data. For a full list of recommended repositories, see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-omics or http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-sequencing

2. Thank you for providing the date(s) when patient medical information was initially recorded. Please also include the date(s) on which your research team accessed the (i) databases and (ii) samples used in your study.

3. For the  66 TNBC patients initially screened, please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified:

 - whether consent was obtained

 - whether consent was informed

 - what type of consent you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed)

 - if consent was not obtained, state if researchers had access to any personal identifying information of the 66 patients, and whether the data was anonymized before researchers accessed it."

4. In your ethics statement in the online submission form and in your manuscript text, for the immunohistochemistry specimens please clarify:

 - whether the ethics committee specifically approved the opt-out consent method described for the use of the immunohistochemistry specimens

 - whether this consent was informed

 - whether researchers had access to any personal identifying information of the 30 patients who donated samples, and whether samples were completely de-identified before researchers accessed them

5. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper was well designed and written.

Results are interesting and were presented appropriately supporting the conclusions.

All findings were supported by available data and by statistical analysis.

Tables and figures are self-explaining and figures' legends are sufficient for isolated understanding.

Discussion was rich and well written.

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Reviewer #1: No