Nobel Medicine Prize awarded to US-German trio for work on optogenetics

American Karl ⁠Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for developing optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain.

The Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said Deisseroth, 54, Hegemann, 71, and Nagel, 73, had been selected for their “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”.

“This method [optogenetics] makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute.

Anna Wedell, a professor in genetics and a member of the Nobel Committee for ‌Physiology or Medicine, said a new era in neuroscience had opened but it was only the beginning.