Under the request of the journal editor, the detailed response below is coupled with an updated version of the article (dated 2020/May/28).
The field of colloidal silver (potential) therapy is indeed unfortunately plagued by commercial unscientific claims. The review itself does not provide any substantial technical claims. But we will still treat it seriously and take this opportunity to (i) improve some aspect of the article, (ii) prevent similar superficial reviewing in the future, and (iii) address the noted issues constructively.
1. The reviewer presents my position as CEO of a medical device company as a negative or irrelevant. For removal of any doubt, I will clarify: In the past 10 years I have been the founder and CEO of a medical device company developing hospital intensive care products for prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) infection. In this context, I have initiated and designed animal trials, clinical trials, bacterial biofilm analysis, FDA/CE registration of medical products, and exhibited repeatedly at the annual meetings of the American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC). My personal research output in this context was expressed not in journal articles but in published, examined and approved medical device patents (some of which can be viewed on my ResearchGate profile).
2. The reviewer`s statement “There is simply no reliable evidence or efficacy model to support exploring this route [for starting clinical trials]….” is based on just his personal opinion that “The invitro work, from the literature, is on other viruses, and is of poor quality”. i.e., he criticizes my quoted references as of “poor quality” science. In response, (i) I added new references of work on Corona type viruses which were not in the original version. (ii) My most key references are by (a) H.H Lara & M.J. Yacaman, from University of Texas San Antonio [ref#5,9] ; (b) Dongxi Xiang, from Harvard Medical School [ref#27] ; (c) Chunying Chen, from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology Beijing [ref#24]. The reviewer throws unsubstantiated dismissive adjectives. If the reviewer has some scientifically based negative statements to make about these references – We will be thankful to receive them and be appreciative of his insights.
3. The reviewer states his expert opinion that “The model …. is completely naïve”. The reviewer`s academic record does not show knowledge or experience about inhalation drug delivery. Yet, we don`t blame him for being unknowledgeable of the subject. We recognize that antimicrobial inhalation delivery is a very specialized domain which even most pharmacologists are not familiar with (if one is not involved with intensive care pneumonia research or CF treatment). Our model is in line with the cutting edge of inhalation drug delivery modelling, as elaborated particularly in reference [21] of our article. Indeed, in retrospect, we realized the need to explain in more approachable manner the core knowledge and assumptions that go into the model calculations. Hence, in the updated posting of the article, we expanded both the beginning of the “Formulation Calculation” section and the “Achieving IC at Target Airway Surface Liquid” section. We also added a new Figure-1 and two new references [38,39].
4. The reviewer comment that “there is no conflict of interest declaration in the preprint”. In response, in our updated article posting, we added a conflict of interest statement.
5. To end, the reviewer worries about “… in a time of pandemic, ….. make unsupported recommendations for therapeutic interventions is highly problematic… etc…”. To clarify, our article states clearly that its purpose is the planning of clinical trials.
Altogether, we thank the reviewer for stimulating our improved exposition in the updated post of the article.