Reviewer's report
Title:The actin-bundling protein Fascin is overexpressed in inflammatory bowel
disease and may be important in tissue repair.
Version: 1Date:23 September 2010
Reviewer: Laura Machesky
Reviewer's report:
This is an important and timely study implicating fascin for the first time in human
inflammatory bowel disease. The authors show increased fascin expression in
the base of crypts in diverticulitis and widespread fascin expression in Chron’s
colitis and ulcerative colitis. They implicate fascin in the restitution phase of
ulcerative colitis (UC) by showing high fascin expression in cells thought to be
actively migrating at the wound edges in healing ulcers. Using a panel of
samples, they show that fascin expression is higher and more widespread in
Chron’s than in UC. Finally, they test the effect of two commonly used treatments
against inflammatory bowel disease, ASA and sodium butyrate, on fascin
expression and they find that ASA lowers fascin expression and cell motility in
vitro, while butyrate has the opposite effect. Their findings suggest that patients
could benefit from a combination therapy where butyrate (or dietary fibre) were
used to maintain high fascin and high cell motility and ASA was used to reduce
the inflammation. This is a relatively small pilot study, but I think that it will spark
interest in the community and may hopefully lead to funding for larger studies to
determine the impact and usefulness of this discovery. I have only discretionary
comments for revisions.
Discretionary Revisions:
1) The fascin expression experiments would have more impact and be more
convincing if they were done quantitatively- e.g. run the experiment three times,
quantify the bands on the western blots and report the % increase or decrease in
the fascin levels.
2) The cell motility experiments would have more impact if they could be
repeated in at least one other cell line independently.
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest 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:The actin-bundling protein Fascin is overexpressed in inflammatory bowel
disease and may be important in tissue repair.
Version: 1Date:23 September 2010
Reviewer: Laura Machesky
Reviewer's report:
This is an important and timely study implicating fascin for the first time in human
inflammatory bowel disease. The authors show increased fascin expression in
the base of crypts in diverticulitis and widespread fascin expression in Chron’s
colitis and ulcerative colitis. They implicate fascin in the restitution phase of
ulcerative colitis (UC) by showing high fascin expression in cells thought to be
actively migrating at the wound edges in healing ulcers. Using a panel of
samples, they show that fascin expression is higher and more widespread in
Chron’s than in UC. Finally, they test the effect of two commonly used treatments
against inflammatory bowel disease, ASA and sodium butyrate, on fascin
expression and they find that ASA lowers fascin expression and cell motility in
vitro, while butyrate has the opposite effect. Their findings suggest that patients
could benefit from a combination therapy where butyrate (or dietary fibre) were
used to maintain high fascin and high cell motility and ASA was used to reduce
the inflammation. This is a relatively small pilot study, but I think that it will spark
interest in the community and may hopefully lead to funding for larger studies to
determine the impact and usefulness of this discovery. I have only discretionary
comments for revisions.
Discretionary Revisions:
1) The fascin expression experiments would have more impact and be more
convincing if they were done quantitatively- e.g. run the experiment three times,
quantify the bands on the western blots and report the % increase or decrease in
the fascin levels.
2) The cell motility experiments would have more impact if they could be
repeated in at least one other cell line independently.
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest 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:The actin-bundling protein Fascin is overexpressed in inflammatory bowel
disease and may be important in tissue repair.
Version: 1Date:23 September 2010
Reviewer: Laura Machesky
Reviewer's report:
This is an important and timely study implicating fascin for the first time in human
inflammatory bowel disease. The authors show increased fascin expression in
the base of crypts in diverticulitis and widespread fascin expression in Chron’s
colitis and ulcerative colitis. They implicate fascin in the restitution phase of
ulcerative colitis (UC) by showing high fascin expression in cells thought to be
actively migrating at the wound edges in healing ulcers. Using a panel of
samples, they show that fascin expression is higher and more widespread in
Chron’s than in UC. Finally, they test the effect of two commonly used treatments
against inflammatory bowel disease, ASA and sodium butyrate, on fascin
expression and they find that ASA lowers fascin expression and cell motility in
vitro, while butyrate has the opposite effect. Their findings suggest that patients
could benefit from a combination therapy where butyrate (or dietary fibre) were
used to maintain high fascin and high cell motility and ASA was used to reduce
the inflammation. This is a relatively small pilot study, but I think that it will spark
interest in the community and may hopefully lead to funding for larger studies to
determine the impact and usefulness of this discovery. I have only discretionary
comments for revisions.
Discretionary Revisions:
1) The fascin expression experiments would have more impact and be more
convincing if they were done quantitatively- e.g. run the experiment three times,
quantify the bands on the western blots and report the % increase or decrease in
the fascin levels.
2) The cell motility experiments would have more impact if they could be
repeated in at least one other cell line independently.
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest 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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