Prof. Michał Grąt received this prestigious award in the “Healthcare Professional” category of the 2026 Health Market Awards.
The rationale for the award stated: “The laureate belongs to the group of physicians who not only save lives in the most difficult situations, but also define new boundaries for modern medicine. His work opens up previously limited treatment options for patients, and his research helps to qualify patients for transplants with growing accuracy.”
Prof. Michał Grąt is a surgeon and transplant specialist, the national consultant for clinical transplantology, head of the Department of Transplantation, General and Liver Surgery, and the Vice Rector of WUM for International Relations, Promotion and Development.
The development of new transplant strategies for patients in whom standard modalities are insufficient plays a special role in the work of his team. These include auxiliary transplantations, in which a portion of the donor's liver temporarily supports the function of the damaged organ of the recipient, enabling its regeneration. The team used this strategy in patients with extensive, life-threatening liver injury.
In 2026, the team supervised by Prof. Michał Grąt performed the world's first chimeric liver transplant. A fragment of the patient's own liver was combined with a fragment of an organ harvested from a deceased donor. After the regeneration of her own liver, the temporary graft was removed, which allowed for the completion of immunosuppressive treatment.
The Portrait of Polish Medicine was also awarded to Polish transplantology for a record year and a record number of transplants performed in 2025.
