PONE-D-23-40587SPOP Expression Is Associated with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in Pancreatic CancerPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Authors present an interesting paper on the potential role of SPOP as a biomarker for immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer.

Manuscript is potentially interesting however, in its present form, it is not suitable for pubblication since english language needs extensive revisions. Please provide a more clear, grammarly correct and concise version of the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: 1. The author should claim an ethics statement with the supervision of ethics.

2. Figure 1A conflicts with Figure 1B regarding the cancer types that showed significant differences in the expression of SPOP mRNA levels. Timer 2 database stores the mRNA profiles from TCGA cohorts.

3. In some figure legends, there are different expressions regarding subplot nomination.

4. The author claimed SPOP as an outstanding prognostic

biomarker, but they did not test the robust prognostic value in different cohorts other than TCGA. Moreover, there were some much of cancer types.

5. In the figure legend of Figure 9, the author claims the TIC profile was obtained from 72 paired PAAD patients, while there were so few data points in the scatter plot.

6. The author should add scale information in the legend of Figure 10.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Yuchen Liu

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SPOP Expression Is Associated with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in Pancreatic Cancer

PONE-D-23-40587R1

Dear Dr. Qing Zhu,

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,

Giovanni Messina

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I really appreciate the effort in improvement of the paper. The manuscript is now suitable for publication.

Reviewers' comments: