We thank Marcella Barbarino and Cornedine Jannette de Gooijer and their colleagues for their interest in the STELLAR study. Barbarino and colleagues raise questions related to a possible selection bias in patient enrolment. Any single-arm phase 2 study has well known limitations. However, STELLAR was a relatively large, and well designed pilot study. Patients had incidental diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma and were not part of a screening programme; the majority of them were enrolled in large-volume centres, located in regions with high occupational or environmental asbestos exposure. Patient baseline characteristics, including the percentage of patients with an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance score of 0, were in line with other recent malignant pleural mesothelioma studies, such as the MAPS and LUME-Meso trials. Of note, 26% of patients in our study had a non-epithelioid tumour, a recognised negative prognostic factor captured by both CALGB and EORTC prognostic scores for malignant pleural mesothelioma.

中文翻译：

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间皮瘤的肿瘤治疗领域-作者的回复。

感谢Marcella Barbarino和Cornedine Jannette de Gooijer及其同事对STELLAR研究的关注。Barbarino及其同事提出了与患者入院时可能存在的选择偏见有关的问题。任何单臂2期研究都有众所周知的局限性。但是，STELLAR是一个相对较大且设计良好的试点研究。患者被误诊为恶性胸膜间皮瘤，不属于筛查程序；他们中的大多数进入了大型中心，这些中心位于职业或环境石棉暴露率很高的地区。患者基线特征（包括东部合作肿瘤小组表现得分为0的患者百分比）与其他近期恶性胸膜间皮瘤研究一致，例如MAPS和LUME-Meso试验。值得注意的是