PONE-D-23-38885Evaluation of dental pulp stem cells response to flowable nano-hybrid dental composites: a comparative analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Saber,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 10 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr Riham M. Aly

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: No

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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

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Shehabeldin M. Saber et al. submitted an interesting work about developing a nano-hybrid dental composite. The topic was to some degree of significance, and might arouse a certain impact on this field. However, there were some issues pending addressed. In conclusion, the manuscript could be reconsidered for publication after a Major Revision. Please refer to the following comments:

A. A scheme depicting the whole picture of this study could be added at the end of Introduction.

B. For the chemicals listed in Table 2, it would be helpful to also provide the molecular structures.

C. Scale bars should be supplemented in Figure 1A, Figure 2 and Figure 7.

D. What was the unit of data in Table 4? Please demonstrate in the columns.

E. Statistical analysis should be performed for Figure 4.

F. Please include some discussion about clinical and industrial translation in Discussion Section.

G. The Conclusion Section was a bit short. Some critical data could be added therein.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the authors for addressing this important point of research and for their efforts. However, I don’t recommend publishing of this paper in the current version because of the following causes:

1) The quality of figures is too pore; the typing is not clear and the colors of the figures is not appropriate

2) The microscopic images have poor quality with no scale bars

3) The overall English and scientific writing of the paper is not professional and should be totally revised

4) Many sections in the methodology are not mentioned clearly.

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6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: 24.12 PLOS ONE.docx

PONE-D-23-38885R1Evaluation of dental pulp stem cells response to flowable nano-hybrid dental composites: a comparative analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Saber,

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.

==============================

You are requested to address the reviewers new comments, especially those regarding the methodological procedures. Details regarding the antibodies used in the flow cytometry experiments, would be valuable details for reproduction of the study. Also, more details regarding MTT and the time points are needed. Kindly, make sure that you address 

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 11 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Riham M. Aly

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. 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

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. 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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. 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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

6. 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: Thank you for inviting me to re-review this paper. After going through the response file and the manuscript, I supposed that the revision would suffice.

Reviewer #2: I would like to thank the authors for their effort in conducting the experimental work of the current study. However, the English and over all scientific writing of the paper still need major modifications and Here are some comment to help you enhancing your manuscript:

1) The abstract should be divided into background, methodology, results and conclusion. Please adjust the subheadings accordingly.

2) Please state in the abstract which odontogenic markers did you evaluate?

3) Please provide a list of abbreviations

4) Please clarify what is % wt when being used for the first time?

5) The file that I received contains two versions of the manuscript, please edit.

6) The overall English of the paper looks better but it still needed to be improved, please consider academic English revision.

7) Line 8 under the subtitle of “DPSCs isolation and culture” in the methodology, there is nothing called 2mm3, please edit.

8) At the end of the same section, there is nothing called “the experiments used cells….”,

9) In the methodology, under the subtitle of “DPSCs Characterization’, please provide the model of the used inverted microscope.

10) In the flow cytometry part in the methodology, please describe whether the used antibodies were conjugated or not and use the professional way of writing as cells were stained with……..

11) In the multilineage differentiation, please add the word of “according to manufacturer’s instructions after the multilineage kit, then briefly describe the performed procedures.

12) The methodology still contains many English errors. For example, It is culture medium not culture media

13) Under the methodology of the cell viability assay, what are the different time points at which did you added the MTT?

14) Please follow the professional English terminologies and formatting while writing the methodology, for example; the sub heading under a specific heading should be shifted to some extend and so on.

15) Please provide the name and origins of the companies for the used material and supplies.

16) The resolution of figure 1 is not clear, A and B have different back grounds and even the histograms are not well- aligned and don’t have the same size.

17) Please provide a professional presentation for Fig.2

18) The resolution and background of fig.5 is not clear.

19) I can’t see the figure legends, please provide.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

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.

Evaluation of dental pulp stem cells response to flowable nano-hybrid dental composites: a comparative analysis

PONE-D-23-38885R2

Dear Dr. Saber,

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,

Dr Riham M. Aly

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: