Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 15, 2021
Decision Letter - Bhaskar Saha, Editor

PONE-D-21-22172Design, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of N-oxide Derivatives with Potent In Vivo Antileishmanial ActivityPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Graminha,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Bhaskar Saha

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match.

When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“NO”

At this time, please address the following queries:

a)        Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution.

b)        State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

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Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This study was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP Process: 2016/09502-7, 2016/06931-4, 2018/17739-2, 2018/11079-0 and 2017/03552-5). Programa de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Científico da Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas da UNESP – PADC. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). L.C.C. is CNPq PhD student fellow (143334/2017-4). I.M.P is CNPq postdoctoral fellow (153581/2018-2). J.L.S, F.H.S. and M.A.S.G are recipient of a Research Productivity Scholarship from the National Council for Research and Development (CNPq Ref. Process: 304731/2017-0, 311746/2017-9 and 305174/2020-7, respectively). The authors are grateful to Profº André Tempone and Felipe Torres for Leishmania infantum (MHOM/MA67IMA263) donation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“MASG (2017/03552-5 and 2016/06931-4) FAPESP - The São Paulo Research Poundation and (305174/2020-7) CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

JLS (2018/11079-0) FAPESP - The São Paulo Research Poundation and (304731/2017-0) CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

FHS (311746/2017-9) CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

LCC (143334/2017-4) CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

IMP (153581/2018-2) CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

GFSF (2016/095502-7) (2018/17739-2) - FAPESP - The São Paulo Research Foundation

CNPq: https://www.gov.br/cnpq/pt-br

FAPESP: https://fapesp.br/en/about

Did the sponsors or funders play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript?

NO.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

5. PLOS ONE now requires that authors provide the original uncropped and unadjusted images underlying all blot or gel results reported in a submission’s figures or Supporting Information files. This policy and the journal’s other requirements for blot/gel reporting and figure preparation are described in detail at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-blot-and-gel-reporting-requirements and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-preparing-figures-from-image-files. When you submit your revised manuscript, please ensure that your figures adhere fully to these guidelines and provide the original underlying images for all blot or gel data reported in your submission. See the following link for instructions on providing the original image data: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-original-images-for-blots-and-gels.

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6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The manuscript reports synthesis of 24 compounds which are tested on Leishmania-infected BALB/c mice for their anti-leishmanial activities. The identified one compound show significant anti-leishmanial activity in both spleen and liver.

However, the manuscript requires several moderations as follows:

1. Please merge Figures 2, 3 and 4 into one - Figure 2

2. Please merge Figures 5 and 6 into one - Figure 3

3. Please merge Figure 7 and 8 into one - Figure 4

4. Please move Figure 9 into supplementary figure.

This will help shorten the manuscript. Please check the composition of the manuscript.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: Minor Revision

1. Page 24, Line 566, the figure legend needs to be written more elaborately.

2. Figure Number 5 is unreadable.

3. Page no 28, line number 601, figure number 6B and 6C is cited. No figure 6B and 6C is in the paper.

4. Page no 28, line no 607, figure 7 is cited, the description does not match with figure7.

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Reviewer #1: No

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While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 1

Thank you for all the critiques/suggestions. All answers required are in the letter (Response to Reviewers) that responds each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer. We also performed a careful revision of our Financial Support that should be used to change the online submission form on our behalf.

We hope that with all the additions and modifications made to the text, this version of the manuscript is clearer to the readers and suitable to be now accepted to be published at PLos One.

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers (1).docx
Decision Letter - Bhaskar Saha, Editor

Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of N-oxide derivatives with potent in vivo antileishmanial activity

PONE-D-21-22172R1

Dear Dr. Graminha,

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.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Bhaskar Saha

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Bhaskar Saha, Editor

PONE-D-21-22172R1

Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of N-oxide derivatives with potent in vivo antileishmanial activity

Dear Dr. Graminha:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Bhaskar Saha

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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