The Nobel Assembly awarded the 2026 medicine prize to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries on light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet said on 5 October.
Optogenetics lets researchers switch individual nerve cells on or off with light in a living brain. Reuters quoted assembly secretary-general Thomas Perlmann describing that control of individual cells. The laureates share 12 million Swedish kronor, about 1.2 million dollars.
Deisseroth, 54, works at Stanford. Hegemann, 71, is at Humboldt University and Nagel, 73, at the University of Wurzburg. The assembly said the method is used worldwide to study how neurons interact.
The prize opened Nobel week. Physics is due on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday and the peace prize on Friday. The economics prize is scheduled for 12 October.
The award recognizes work already in laboratory use. It does not itself approve a therapy.