Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to scientists who pioneered work in optogenetics

Scientists Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg ‌Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or ​Medicine for “discoveries concerning light-gated ​ion channels and optogenetics,” the award-giving body ​said Monday in Stockholm.

Optogenetics “makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska ​Institutet.

“This method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal ​the brain’s mysteries,” he said.

Deisseroth, a 54-year-old American, Hegemann, a 71-year-old German, and Georg Nagel, a 73-year-old German, were all surprised to learn they had won, Perlmann said.

“All ‌three said the same thing, that they thought it was absolutely wonderful to receive the prize with the other two, and they call them … friends. That it’s such an honour to receive them together. So that’s something they conveyed,” Perlmann said.

The Nobel Prizes come with a prize amount of 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.7 million Cdn), which the three scientists will split. Deisseroth is based at Stanford University in California, with Hegemann at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel at Germany’s University of Wurzburg.

In clinical trials, researchers are restoring vision to people blinded by a condition called retinitis pigmentosa by inserting a light-sensitive protein in the retina.

Researchers also hope optogenetics could improve cochlear implants, allowing more precise stimulation of ​the auditory nerve than current electrical devices.

Advancements over decades

In the early 1990s, Hegemann investigated how the alga Chlamydomonas reacts to light in half a millisecond. He hypothesized that a single protein captured light and acted as an ion channel. Nagel tested this by injecting Chlamydomonas genes into frog eggs, discovering channelrhodopsin-2 — an ion channel that opens when exposed to light.

In 2003, they published that ⁠this protein could be introduced into human and hamster cells to generate electrical impulses using light. In 2005, Deisseroth demonstrated the technique in rat nerve cells, and the method was named optogenetics a year later.

Prizes for chemistry and physics will be awarded Tuesday and Wednesday, literature on Thursday and the peace prize on Friday. The economics prize will be announced Oct. 12.

The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel, who in his will dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.

Nobel ‌died in 1896, with the first prizes bearing his name following five years later.

The Nobel prizes are presented to the laureates on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.