Prix Galien CEE Lifetime Achievement Award 2026 for Dr Małgorzata Adamkiewicz

The Prix Galien CEE Lifetime Achievement Award 2026 was presented to Małgorzata Adamkiewicz, MD, PhD, Chair of the Supervisory Board and co-owner of Adamed Pharma. The distinction honours a body of work that has lastingly changed the conditions for pharmaceutical research in Poland and widened patients' access to modern therapies. The decision to present the award in New York was deliberate. The Galien Foundation was marking the twentieth anniversary of Prix Galien USA there this year and hosting Prix Galien International. Nobel laureates and leaders of the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries were in the room. In that company, the work of a laureate from Central and Eastern Europe was presented for the first time. "It is no accident that we are meeting in New York today. Dr Małgorzata Adamkiewicz's achievements are why we want to honour her here, among the most distinguished figures in world medicine. For me, as the Galien Foundation's representative for our region, this is a particular source of pride," says Tomasz Hildt, Regional Director of the Galien Foundation for the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe. Bruno Cohen, Chairman of The Galien Foundation, noted that the laureate's achievements reach beyond the region and belong to the international character of this year's celebrations. The laudation underlined an unusual career. For more than a decade Małgorzata Adamkiewicz worked as an endocrinologist, combining clinical practice with science and teaching, before joining the family company in the late 1990s. There she initiated Poland's first research department devoted to original medicines, at a time when the Polish pharmaceutical industry did not carry out work of this kind. The laudation also recalled olanzapine: a formulation developed in Poland opened access to modern treatment for schizophrenia for patients for whom it had previously been out of reach. In her remarks after receiving the award, the laureate returned to clinical experience as the source of her later decisions. She spoke of the responsibility that the creators of innovation bear today, and of the need for cooperation across borders, convinced that human life, not technology, is the ultimate measure of progress in medicine. The Prix Galien CEE Lifetime Achievement Award is given to leaders in science, medicine and the pharmaceutical industry from Central and Eastern Europe for work that has contributed to breakthrough change in healthcare. In 2025 the award went to Jerzy Starak.