Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded for optogenetics

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries in light-sensitive ion channels and optogenetics."

Understanding how the brain forms memories, feelings and behavior patterns has long been a dream of researchers, the Nobel Committee said in a press release. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discoveries leading to optogenetics, a technique that allows the activity of individual nerve cells in the living brain to be switched on or off. The technique is now being used in laboratories around the world to unlock the mysteries of the brain.

Hegemann and Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin, a protein with unique properties. They found that no matter which cell they introduced the protein into, those cells became light sensitive. Deisseroth introduced the channelrhodopsin gene into the nerve cells of rats. By shining blue light into the cells, he was able to trigger a nerve signal. He later succeeded in getting this light-controlled "switch" for nerve cells to work in the brains of living mice.

This method of manipulating nerve signals with light is now called optogenetics and has quickly gained worldwide significance.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Americans Mary E. Brankow, Fred Ramsdell and Japan's Shimon Sakaguchi "for their discoveries in the field of peripheral immune tolerance."

History of awards

From 1901 to 2026, a total of 117 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded, with 232 winners.

The Nobel Foundation's statutes provide that the prize may be divided equally between two works if each of them turns out to be worthy of an award.

If the work that deserves the prize is created by two or three authors, it is awarded to them jointly.

39 awards in the field of medicine were awarded to only one laureate. 36 prizes were shared between two people, and another 39 prizes were shared between three laureates.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was not awarded nine times: in 1915-1918, 1921, 1925, 1940-1942.

According to the rules of the Nobel Committee, if none of the works under consideration seem sufficiently advanced and unique to the experts, the prize fund will remain until next year.

There are 13 women among the Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine. Of these, only Barbara McClintock received it alone, without co-authors, in 1983.