The Immunology & Cell Biology Publication of the Year Awards have been established for outstanding studies submitted by first authors who are financial members of the Australian & New Zealand Society for Immunology Inc. in the year of the article's publication. Articles vying for these awards can come from any of the journal categories including Original Articles, Outstanding Observations, Perspectives or Short Communications. The ASI President together with members of the ASI Executive and the Immunology & Cell Biology Editorial Team undertake rigorous review to identify the most outstanding original research articles based on scientific excellence. The winner of the Chris and Bhama Parish ICB Publication of the Year Award is awarded an AU$1000 scholarship provided by Wiley and the runner-up is awarded an AU$500 scholarship provided by Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Every year an outstanding series of papers are submitted for consideration for the prizes, and 2020 was no different with an exceptional standard of science reported in the papers. It is a great pleasure to announce the winners of the awards for 2020 as follows: Chris and Bhama Parish ICB Publication of the Year Award: Ronan Kapetanovic and Syeda Farhana Afroz Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), IMB Centre for Inflammation and Disease Research, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia Lipopolysaccharide promotes Drp1-dependent mitochondrial fission and associated inflammatory responses in macrophages Thermo Fisher Scientific Publication Award: Timothy Patton Infection and Immunity Program, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia Daptomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus clinical isolates are poorly sensed by dendritic cells

The winning paper by Kapetanovic et al.1 is an Original Article entitled “Lipopolysaccharide promotes Drp1-dependent mitochondrial fission and associated inflammatory responses in macrophages” and was published in August 2020. This study by Kapetanovic et al. is an elegant and thoughtful investigation that lies at the interface of immunology and cell biology. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) potently regulates macrophage metabolism and by consequence, mitochondrial functions. In this study, Kapetanovic et al. address the question of how LPS activation can lead to mitochondrial fission in macrophages and show that the Tlr4–MyD88–Drp1 pathway mediates the LPS-induced fission. Additionally, they discover that some but not all downstream LPS-associated inflammatory responses are dependent upon Drp1 and mitochondrial fission. This exciting study begins to dissect the molecular signals that activate and control microbial-associated mitochondrial changes in macrophages with the hope that understanding these signals may reveal new therapeutic targets to treat inflammatory diseases.

The Original Article by Patton et al.,2 “Daptomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus clinical isolates are poorly sensed by dendritic cells,” published in January 2020, is the winner of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Publication Award for 2020. Patton et al. investigated an intriguing question, “Does antibiotic resistance in a microbe alter how the immune system responds to that microbe?” To address this novel question, Patton et al. evaluated how dendritic cells (DC) responded to clinical isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that were also daptomycin resistant or sensitive (DapR or DapS). They found that DC produced significantly lower levels of most cytokines in response to DapR than a matched DapS isolate. Interestingly, they determined that cDC1 were primarily responsible for the differential response and linked the reduced DC activation by DapR isolates to mutations in the S. aureus cls2 gene. While one of the strengths of this study lies in the paired DapS and DapR MRSA isolates for these analyses, by far the greatest strength of this study lies in asking the right questions and then developing new ways to answer them.

The award-winning papers by Drs Kapetanovic and Patton highlight the outstanding quality of the work published in Immunology & Cell Biology. My very best congratulations are extended to the awardees on their success. I also thank our sponsors, Wiley and Thermo Fisher Scientific, for their continued support of outstanding science and scientists and the journal. It is hoped that the outstanding quality of these awarded publications will also encourage others to consider Immunology & Cell Biology as a key journal for their cutting-edge research.

Ronan Kapetanovic joint recipient of the 2020 Chris and Bhama Parish ICB Publication of the Year Award.

Timothy Patton, recipient of the 2020 Thermo Fisher Scientific Publication Award.

Farhana Afroz, joint recipient of the 2020 Chris and Bhama Parish ICB Publication of the Year Award.