LAUSR

I have read a study entitled “Emodin-Conjugated PEGylation of Fe 3 O 4 Nanoparticles for FI/MRI Dual-Modal Imaging and Therapy in Pancreatic Cancer” in International Journal of Nanomedicine . 1 This study showed Emodin-Conjugated Fe 3 O 4 Nanoparticles can be applied for pancreatic cancer imaging and therapy. There may be several issues requiring attention. First, it was surprising that the inhibition rates of Fe 3 O 4 -PEG-Cy7-EMO on hTERT-HPNE cells (normal pancreatic cells) were so high in Figure 5A, 60% at 80 μg/mL and 70% at 100 μg/mL. However, the apoptosis or necrosis rate was lower than 10% as shown in Figure 5B. If Fe 3 O 4 -PEG-Cy7-EMO has such high toxicity to normal cells, the applicable potential is low. There may be an error in one of the data. For cell viability assay, 6 μg/mL was not shown in “Methods (0, 12.5, 25, 50, 80, 100 µg/mL)”, but it was shown in Figure 5A.The authors shouldrecheck their originaldata. Another issue is thefluorescence imaging of liver inFigure 6E and6F at 6 h. Figure 6E shows a very low signal in liver at 6 h. However, moderate fluorescent signal in liver was observed in Figure 6F. In flow cytometer (FCS) analysis, the data shown in Figure 5B was equal to the data in Table 1 except for apoptosis rate of BxPc3 treated with Fe 3 O 4 -PEG-Cy7-EMO at 80 μg/mL.