Oncology

eLife assessment

The authors analyze a comprehensive cohort of human plasma samples to identify an extracellular vesicles protein signature for earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Application of liquid biopsies is valuable, and it addresses a significant clinical problem as pancreas cancer is often diagnosed in late stage with standard biopsies often nondiagnostic. The strength of evidence is largely solid; however, certain aspects of the data were deemed incomplete, given the broad manuscript claims. This work supports the use of extracellular vesicles in clinical settings, with potential interest to scientists and clinicians.

eLife assessment

This study explored practitioners' assessments of the impact of the pandemic on cervical cancer screening and follow-up. This is a very important topic that could continue to have implications for how this screening process is delivered now, after the pandemic. The authors need to more fully describe their methodology and temper conclusions to fit within those limitations.

eLife assessment

This important study evaluates the immunogenicity of 3rd and 4th doses of SARS-CoV2 vaccinations in patients with cancer. Their study is notable in that neutralization of Omicron was absent in all patients after the third dose but increased to 33% after the fourth dose. With the definitions and patient population better described, this paper would be of interest to those studying the effects of repeated COVID boosters on Omicron immunity.

eLife assessment

Upregulation of PCA3 and downregulation of PRUNE2 in prostate cancer were first discovered in this work, which innovatively demonstrated that PCA3 and PRUNE3 function as an oncogene and a tumor suppressor gene respectively. The conclusion is further enhanced by the use of two distinct patient cohorts, which highlights the clinical significance. Functional experiments will be needed to more comprehensively validate the findings.

eLife assessment

This valuable study describes the effects of endocrine therapy in a large series of Chinese patients treated with mastectomy (both efficacy and side effects). Whilst there are some caveats regarding the methodology (retrospective, small numbers of events, and some potential methodological bias in data collection) this is a solid piece of work and with further, ideally prospective data collection, has the potential to improve the management of patients with DCIS.

eLife assessment

The fundamental work by Starret et al advances the understanding of the etiological roles of viruses and other environmental factors in bladder cancers after solid organ transplantation. The evidence is compelling using cutting edge sequencing approaches of patient samples. This work will be immediately interesting to multiple fields (of viral oncogenesis, BK polyomavirus (BKPyV) and JC polyomavirus (JCPyV), solid organ transplantation and whole genome and transcriptome sequencing) and may eventually influence care after organ transplantation.

eLife assessment

The results of this work show a non-determinant effect of the COVID pandemic on the logistics of patient care from diagnosis to treatment modalities. The significance of this scoping review relates to the methodologic design of future outcome measures in cancer reporting that include time measurements between important clinical decision points or treatments in a standardized fashion. Without this standardization in reporting, comparisons to different length intervals are impossible and may have a significant impact on patient outcomes. The strength of the evidence is compelling, given the exhaustive nature of the literature review. This work should be seen by all oncologic units and research groups so that time benchmarks can be established that correlate to patient outcomes. These measurements require oncology society uptake and reporting to be effective.

Evaluation Summary:

Barber et al present a manuscript discussing predictive factors for chemotherapy efficacy in head and neck squamous cancer (HNSCC). The paper is well written, and its style/formatting are optimal. The baseline signature moderately predicted outcome, and the data after one cycle further improved the algorithm, though this decreases its utility as a pure predictive tool. It is interesting that a subpopulation of monocytes, a subset of white peripheral cells long suspected to correlate with outcomes in HNSCC was one of the key drivers of the algorithm. However the overall impact in the field of this work seems limited by a number of factors, including that the authors focused on immune cell subpopulations and exosomes, which narrows the scope (no cytokines or other biomarkers were included); the signatures were not prospectively validated on an independent cohort; the algorithm was developed around a first-line therapy that is no longer considered to be the standard of care for HNSCC; and, while most of the conclusions are supported by the data, some of the caveats (such as the lack of a validation cohort, key in predictive biomarker development), are not addressed.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

eLife assessment

This study presents valuable findings on the symptoms and disease trajectories preceding a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in Denmark. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although an error analysis of the text mining evaluation results and a discussion on how the findings can be applied in practice would strengthen the study. The work will be of interest to public health researchers and clinicians working on pancreatic cancer.

Evaluation Summary:

Chaudhary and colleagues follow up their preliminary study on mitochondrial genome copy number in AML with this current study by looking if the expression of specific genes encoding mitochondrial components could provide further insight into AML prognosis. Multivariate analysis was used to identify those genes whose expression was prognostic of patient outcome, which led to the identification of three mitochondrial genes whose expression was used to build a multivariate risk model for childhood AML patients. Altogether, the work by Chaudhary and colleagues interestingly builds on their previous work and suggests that mitochondria may influence AML outcomes, and measuring mitochondrial parameters may help assess patient risk. However, the authors will need to identify the novelty of their findings over the previous reports from their own group.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)