The winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine 2026

The winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize for Medicine are Karl Delsseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel: they laid the foundations of optogenetics, the discipline that combines genetics and optics to study the behavior of cells.

The American Deisseroth and the Germans Hegemann and Nagel jointly won "for their discoveries relating to light-activated ion channels and optogenetics", we read in the prize motivation. In particular, their research has laid the foundations for controlling nerve signals with light.

Their discoveries and experiments have made it possible to study the brain in great detail, to the point of being able to turn on or off the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain. This method is now used in laboratories around the world to understand how the brain organizes emotions and memories. Hegemann and Nagel pioneered this research with the discovery of the protein called channelrhodopsin which, if introduced into cells, makes them sensitive to light.

Subsequently, the American Deisseroth transferred the channelrhodopsin gene into the nerve cells of rats and, by illuminating them with blue light, managed to trigger a nervous signal.

In other experiments this special light switch made it possible to control nerve cells in the brains of live mice.