Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel jointly awarded 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries on light-gated ion channels and optogenetics

Key facts

• Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were jointly awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
• The laureates were selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute and will share a prize sum of 12 million Swedish kronor.
• Optogenetics makes it possible to switch on or off the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain and is now used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain's mysteries.
• In the early 1990s, Hegemann studied how the alga Chlamydomonas reacts to light and hypothesised that a single protein captured light and acted as an ion channel; Nagel then discovered channelrhodopsin-2, an ion channel that opens when exposed to light, and in 2003 they published that the protein could make human and hamster cells generate electrical impulses using light.
• In 2005, Deisseroth at Stanford demonstrated the technique in rat nerve cells, and the method was named optogenetics a year later.
• In 2007, Deisseroth demonstrated that the light-controlled switch could be used to control nerve cells in the brains of living mice.
• Clinical trials are restoring vision to people blinded by retinitis pigmentosa by inserting a light-sensitive protein in the retina, and researchers hope optogenetics could improve cochlear implants for more precise stimulation of the auditory nerve.
• In 2002, Georg Nagel, Peter Hegemann and colleagues reported channelrhodopsin-1, a light-gated proton channel found in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
• The medicine prize has previously honoured Alexander Fleming for penicillin in 1945 and Karl Landsteiner for the discovery of human blood groups in 1930.
• The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
• The 2026 award is the 117th Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine since 1901; the youngest laureate was Frederick G. Banting at 31 in 1923 and the oldest was Peyton Rous at 87 in 1966.
• The medicine prize announcement is followed by the Physics prize on Tuesday, Chemistry on Wednesday, Literature on Thursday, the Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize on October 12.
• Nobel laureates receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
• In a 2021 study, researchers reported partial recovery of visual function in a blind patient treated with a viral vector carrying the gene for the light-sensitive protein ChrimsonR, with goggles used to stimulate the treated retinal cells.