P. Dutkowski, MD, is Professor of surgery at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is an experienced hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) and liver transplant surgeon. He started his surgical carrier 1993 in Germany at the University of Mainz, and completed his board certification for Surgery in1999, and for Visceral Surgery in 2002. In parallel, he completed his thesis for Habilitation in 2001, after establishing a pioneering research group in the field of machine liver preservation. In 2004, he joined the group of Pierre Alain Clavien in Zurich and succeeded to translate basic research on machine liver perfusion into clinical application. Accordingly, the first worldwide clinical application of hypothermic oxygenated perfusion (HOPE) in DCD livers has been performed in January 2012 in Zurich, followed by several mechanistical analysis of signalling pathways on the technique and effectiveness of HOPE. In parallel, a successful engineering of normothermic perfusion methods enabled also long term ex situ normothermic oxygenated liver perfusion, resulting in the first worldwide transplantation of a three-day perfused liver.
From 2009-2023, P. Dutkowski led the clinical abdominal transplant program in Zurich. Since 2024, he is appointed in Basel for leading the hepatobiliary program and for establishing liver transplantation in Basel.