Editorial: 10 years of Andrology Award

It is with great pleasure that we announce the winner of the 10 years of Andrology Award honoring the best-received manuscript published in Andrology between 2012 and 2022. Because we are celebrating 10 years of the journal, this award was given to honor outstanding work in the area of basic/translational research to an investigator who not only contributed to our field with a significant publication but also demonstrated continuous productivity throughout the past 10 years. The Award was presented during the 48th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Andrology in Boston, MA, USA, April 19−23, 2023, and was given to Dr. Jordi Ribas Maynou from the University of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. The awarded paper was “Comprehensive analysis of sperm DNA fragmentation by five different assays: TUNEL assay, sperm chromatin structure (SCSA), sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD) test and alkaline and neutral Comet assay. Andrology. 2013;1(5):715-722” by J. Ribas-Maynou, A. García-Peiró, A. Fernández-Encinas, C. Abad, M.J. Amengual, E. Prada, J. Navarro, and J. Benet.1 The objective of this study was to compare five most common methodologies for analyzing sperm DNA fragmentation within the same population and establish their cut-off values, sensitivity, and specificity in predicting male infertility. The authors found significant differences in sperm DNA fragmentation between fertile donors and infertile patients in TUNEL, SCSA, SCD, and alkaline Comet assays, but none with the neutral Comet assay. This work, therefore, establishes in a comprehensive study which methods are the most useful to distinguish infertile from fertile men. In addition to this paper, issued in 2013 from the Department of Cell Biology, Physiology, and Immunology at the University of Barcelona, Spain, Dr. Ribas Maynou produced another 50 publications between 2012 and 2022. They were focused on sperm DNA fragmentation, clinical implications of sperm DNA damagefor in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection, sperm telomere length, sperm chromatin condensation, and seminal microbiota. Between 2014 and 2019, Dr. Ribas Maynou was affiliated with the CIMAB Male Infertility Center in Barcelona. From 2019 onwards, he has worked in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Girona, Spain, and is a Marie Curie COFUND Fellow at TechnoSperm, an animal reproductive biotechnology center of the University of Girona. The manuscript was chosen by the Board of Associate Editors among a list of deserving papers published in Andrology between 2012 and 2022, which were pre-selected by the Editors-in-Chief (M.C. Hofmann and A. Giwercman). The honored study was chosen because of its creativity, style, and overall impact. We wholeheartedly congratulate the winner and hope that this award will not only recognize the excellence of his work and the work of his research group, but also the quality of manuscripts published in Andrology. Presenting the 10 years of Andrology Award also marks a new procedure for awarding the best papers published in Andrology. From 2024 onwards, award winners will not be selected among papers published during the previous year but during the second -to -last year. This will give the Editors more time to base their decision not only on personal opinions but also on the number of citations. We are looking forward to receiving many more outstanding nominees for this award and sincerely thank all authors of Andrology for making our journal a leader in the field.