Sanofi-Cell Research outstanding paper award of 2012

Abstract

In this November issue of Cell Research, we are proud to announce the winners of the 4th Sanofi-Cell Research Outstanding Paper Award, which were selected from papers published in the 2012 print issues of Cell Research. The 2012 Sanofi-Cell Research Outstanding Review Article Award goes to Dr Dean Tang, for his review paper entitled “Understanding cancer stem cell heterogeneity and plasticity”1. The winners of the 2012 Sanofi-Cell Research Outstanding Research Article Award are Drs Chen-Yu Zhang, Ke Zen and Junfeng Zhang, for their paper entitled “Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA”2; and Drs Yigong Shi and Li Yu, for their paper entitled “Crystal structure and biochemical analyses reveal Beclin 1 as a novel membrane binding protein”3. The award consists of a prize of € 3000 for the Outstanding Review Article Award and € 5000 for the Outstanding Research Article Award sponsored by Sanofi. The three award-winning papers are selected based on the voting by members of the Sanofi-Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences Steering Committee. The award-winning review by Dr Tang was published in the March issue of 2012. The review provides an expert analysis on our current understanding of cancer stem cells, with a focus on discussing their heterogeneity and plasticity. In the first award-winning research article, published in the January 2012 issue, Dr Chen-Yu Zhang and his colleagues report the discovery that a plant microRNA that is abundantly found in rice, could be taken up by animals through food intake, and then acts to regulate the expression of a mammalian gene that is involved in host metabolism, revealing a remarkable example of cross-kingdom regulation by small RNAs. In the second award-winning research article, published in the March 2012 issue, Drs Shi and Yu report the discovery of a novel function of Beclin 1, which is known to play an essential role in autophagy and to be a haplo-insufficient tumor suppressor. Through an elegant combination of structural and biochemical studies, they show that Beclin 1 possesses a novel membrane binding activity, thus providing important molecular insight into how this protein functions. Please join us to congratulate the winners on their winning of the 2012 Sanofi-Cell Research Outstanding Paper Award. We hope that this yearly award program will continue to encourage our fellow scientists to submit their best work to Cell Research.