Dear Colleagues,

As the Editors-in-Chief of Cells, we are pleased to announce the winners of the “Cells 2021 Best Paper Awards for Anniversary Special Issues”. The awards have been granted to:

One first prize: CHF 1000 and a waiver to publish in Cells after peer review

• “Overexpression of an Agave Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxylase Improves Plant Growth and Stress Tolerance”
  Degao Liu et al.
  doi:10.3390/cells10030582

Two second prizes: CHF 800 and CHF 1000 voucher to publish in Cells after peer review

• “Weight Pulling: A Novel Mouse Model of Human Progressive Resistance Exercise”
  Wenyuan G. Zhu et al.
  doi:10.3390/cells10092459
• “Affecting HEK293 Cell Growth and Production Performance by Modifying the Expression of Specific Genes”
  Laura Abaandou et al.
  doi:10.3390/cells10071667

Three third prizes: CHF 500 and CHF 600 voucher to publish in Cells after peer review

• “Comparing Biochemical and Raman Microscopy Analyses of Starch, Lipids, Polyphosphate, and Guanine Pools during the Cell Cycle of Desmodesmus quadricauda”
  Šárka Moudříková et al.
  doi:10.3390/cells10010062
• “Gut Microbiota and Neuroplasticity”
  Julia Murciano-Brea et al.
  doi:10.3390/cells10082084
• “The Genomic Landscape of Thyroid Cancer Tumourigenesis and Implications for Immunotherapy”
  Amandeep Singh et al.
  doi:10.3390/cells10051082

In addition to these prizes, we have also selected ten papers which represented outstanding contributions to our journal. Each outstanding contribution winner will receive a 600 CHF voucher to publish in Cells after peer review. More information about the outstanding contribution winners can be found at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cells/announcements/3571.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the nominated research groups of the aforementioned exceptional papers and for their contributions to the Cells 10th Anniversary Special Issue. We would also like to thank the Award Committee for voting and helping with these awards.

Kind regards,
Editors-in-Chief
Prof. Dr. Alexander E. Kalyuzhny and Prof. Dr. Cord Brakebusch, Cells