Preprint and Open Review

In February 2020, Henry Kwok from the University of Macau asked me whether I want to contribute to an upcoming special issue in the journal Biology*. He was guest editing this special issue on the topic of Proteases — From Basic Structure to Function to Drug Design as Targeted Therapy. The topic is exactly what we are researching at the moment: whether we can target the lymphangiogenic growth factor VEGF-C via its activating proteases. So I tentatively agreed to contribute a review on the activation of VEGFs. We decided for the first time to simultaneously make the manuscript available as a preprint AND to ask for open review. Open review means that the reviewers' comments and our rebuttal will be published together with the article if the article is accepted.
 

We found already several issues with our manuscript (but screwing up of the Figure placement is not our fault, but the fault of the preprint server's PDF generator). Notably we did not have time to update the graphical abstract (is it missing thrombin), but we will incorporate it in the revised version.
We spent much time on the molecular details, but some issues we left out (e.g. the question why ADAMTS3 and KLK3/PSA are regulated by CCBE1, but not the other proteases). If there is something else missing that should be there, please let us know! Any other comments are also appreciated! Here is the link to the preprint:
 

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202101.0304/v1
 

*Biology is an MDPI journal. MDPI had even ended up on Beall's list at some time, but they have come a long way since and seem to be fully legitimate by now.