Reviewer's report
Title:Constitutive activation of glycogen synthase kinase-3beta correlates with
better prognosis and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors in human gastric cancer
Version: 5Date:15 February 2010
Reviewer: Regine Schneider-Stock
Reviewer's report:
The authors show interesting data about the serine-threonine kinase glucogen
synthase kinase 3ß expression in human gastric cancer and verify a prognostic
relevance of GSK-3ß overexpression with GSK-3ß loss in advanced tumors.
Obviously, GSK-3ß phosphorylation is associated with a lower proliferation rate.
There are two major critizisms:
The tissue microarray consists of one punch per tumor block. How they have
ensured that this punch is representative for the tumor? Especially did the
authors verify that the immunostaining for all the markers was homogeneously??
It is known especially for MGMT or p21WAF that these markers show a very
heterogeneous staining pattern in tumors. Who has done the analysis, was it
verified by two independent investigators and how was the inter-observer
variance?
For the correlation between the markers (Tables 2 and 3), the raw data should be
used with Spearman rank correlation as a statistical test. What was the reason
for setting 10% as a cut-off? The authors have to give clear explanations.
Minor Comments:
Page 10, first line:
“to confirm the positive correlation between …”
There was not positive correlation! there was no correlation! and this has been
confirmed by the cell culture experiment
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests'
Reviewer's report
Title:Constitutive activation of glycogen synthase kinase-3beta correlates with
better prognosis and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors in human gastric cancer
Version: 5Date:15 February 2010
Reviewer: Regine Schneider-Stock
Reviewer's report:
The authors show interesting data about the serine-threonine kinase glucogen
synthase kinase 3ß expression in human gastric cancer and verify a prognostic
relevance of GSK-3ß overexpression with GSK-3ß loss in advanced tumors.
Obviously, GSK-3ß phosphorylation is associated with a lower proliferation rate.
There are two major critizisms:
The tissue microarray consists of one punch per tumor block. How they have
ensured that this punch is representative for the tumor? Especially did the
authors verify that the immunostaining for all the markers was homogeneously??
It is known especially for MGMT or p21WAF that these markers show a very
heterogeneous staining pattern in tumors. Who has done the analysis, was it
verified by two independent investigators and how was the inter-observer
variance?
For the correlation between the markers (Tables 2 and 3), the raw data should be
used with Spearman rank correlation as a statistical test. What was the reason
for setting 10% as a cut-off? The authors have to give clear explanations.
Minor Comments:
Page 10, first line:
“to confirm the positive correlation between …”
There was not positive correlation! there was no correlation! and this has been
confirmed by the cell culture experiment
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests'
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Constitutive activation of glycogen synthase kinase-3beta correlates with
better prognosis and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors in human gastric cancer
Version: 5Date:15 February 2010
Reviewer: Regine Schneider-Stock
Reviewer's report:
The authors show interesting data about the serine-threonine kinase glucogen
synthase kinase 3ß expression in human gastric cancer and verify a prognostic
relevance of GSK-3ß overexpression with GSK-3ß loss in advanced tumors.
Obviously, GSK-3ß phosphorylation is associated with a lower proliferation rate.
There are two major critizisms:
The tissue microarray consists of one punch per tumor block. How they have
ensured that this punch is representative for the tumor? Especially did the
authors verify that the immunostaining for all the markers was homogeneously??
It is known especially for MGMT or p21WAF that these markers show a very
heterogeneous staining pattern in tumors. Who has done the analysis, was it
verified by two independent investigators and how was the inter-observer
variance?
For the correlation between the markers (Tables 2 and 3), the raw data should be
used with Spearman rank correlation as a statistical test. What was the reason
for setting 10% as a cut-off? The authors have to give clear explanations.
Minor Comments:
Page 10, first line:
“to confirm the positive correlation between …”
There was not positive correlation! there was no correlation! and this has been
confirmed by the cell culture experiment
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests'
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