Poland has another citizen

 

Prof. Victor Ambros has always remembered his Polish roots. Efforts to restore his Polish citizenship began in early 2026, when the Nobel laureate met Prime Minister Donald Tusk in person in Warsaw.

The decision confirming that Prof. Ambros has been Polish since birth was issued on September 14 by the Masovian Voivode.

"I have great news for you. You are a Pole with a Polish passport. You are a citizen of a country that is the best place on Earth," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, congratulating Prof. Ambros.

The shared goal of Prime Minister Tusk and Prof. Ambros is to attract the most talented young scientists from around the world to Poland. The Prime Minister pledged the state's full support for the project.

"We will meet in May, in Warsaw, in Kraków, in Gdańsk. I will organise everything," the Prime Minister announced.

In May 2027, Prof. Ambros is due to visit Poland again, meet the academic community and take part in official events.

A discovery that changed medicine

 

In 2024, Prof. Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation. Their research changed our understanding of how the body controls its functions and how many diseases develop, including rare diseases and cancers.

Prof. Ambros and his team discovered these small RNA molecules, which regulate gene activity, in the early 1990s. The discovery initially drew little interest from the scientific community. That changed in 2000, when Gary Ruvkun discovered another microRNA, also present in mice, other animals and humans.

Around 1,000 microRNAs have now been identified in humans. These molecules take part in many key biological processes, including development and basic cellular functions. Some are linked to diseases, including cancer.

A better understanding of how microRNAs work has opened the way to new diagnostic and therapeutic methods, as microRNAs can be used to detect diseases and to design drugs that affect gene activity.

A descendant of Poles from the Vilnius region

 

Prof. Victor Ambros is the son of a Polish emigrant. His father, Longin Ambros, was born in 1923 in the Vilnius region. During the Second World War, he was sent to the Third Reich as a forced labourer. After the war, in 1946, he left for the United States, where he started a family.

"I was the first scientist in my family. My dad was an immigrant from Poland. He came to the United States right after World War II and met my mom. They got married, moved to a farm in Vermont and started farming," Prof. Ambros recalled in an interview with the Journal of Cell Biology.

His ties to Poland go beyond his ancestry to include scientific cooperation. During his recent visit to Warsaw, he was a guest at Akademia High School as part of Rare Disease Awareness Week. As chair of the Scientific Council of the International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IMol PAN), he attended a Council meeting and gave a lecture titled "The role of microRNA in post-transcriptional gene regulation."