The Nobel Assembly awarded the 2026 medicine prize to Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday to American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
Reuters reported that the prize recognizes a method that uses light to control individual nerve cells. Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly, said the technique can switch the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain on or off.
Deisseroth, 54, is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and Stanford professor. Hegemann, 71, is at Humboldt University in Berlin, and Nagel, 73, most recently worked at the University of Würzburg, the assembly said. The three will share 12 million Swedish crowns, about $1.2 million.
The underlying work began with a light-sensitive protein in green algae. Nagel and Hegemann reported in 2003 that the protein could be introduced into human cells to generate electrical impulses with light. Deisseroth demonstrated the approach in rat nerve cells in 2005, and the method was named optogenetics in 2006.
Science reported that optogenetics has been adapted in limited work to help some blind people regain modest light sensitivity and is being tested in conditions including epilepsy and pain. Physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics prizes are due later in the week, with the peace prize set for Friday.