Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Optogenetics
2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Deisseroth, Hegemann, Nagel
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for discovering light-gated ion channels and pioneering optogenetics. Their work lets researchers control neurons with light, transforming neuroscience and opening new ways to study brain circuits and behavior.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 was awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics."
- djoshea
Beyond the initial discovery, Karl and his lab put an extraordinary amount of effort into making the technique accessible and available for neuroscientists around the world. The impact on the field here is in the distillation, in ensuring it could be applied to manifold questions and disease models. Richly deserved.
I participated in early work in optogenetics in larger brains, and Karl was my postdoc adviser. He is a deeply thoughtful and generous scientist. His book Projections unpacks some of his thinking as to how these tools may unravel and treat a panel of psychiatric conditions. The company MapLight he started is working to make these treatments a reality via ongoing clinical trials https://maplightrx.com/pipeline/
- dekhn
When I first heard of optogenetics, I figured they had the idea completely backwards. optogenetics uses light from outside the organism to trigger actions inside cells in the organism. I thought the idea would be to put light-emitting genes inside organisms, and then "read out" the underlying biology. I learned only recently that somebody is working on adding fluorescence to cuttlefish to see "when neurons fire" (with spatial info), among other thiings: https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-engineere...
Of course my long game is to add cuttlefish-style "pulsing, glowing" tattoos to humans.
- ckemere
I’ve always been impressed with Deisseroth. Since the early optogenetics days he always was excited to share materials. (I have fond memories of driving back from a visit to Stanford with vectors plucked from their freezer, what MTA!?) And he was eager to promote young scientists not only in his own lab but also in others (like myself) that were innovating in these spaces. And in every talk I’ve heard, he’s shared credit really openly.
There’s a big contrast there to how some scientists operate - hoarding ideas, being cautious in collaboration, demanding credit. I’m so pleased for him!
- rpozarickij
I learned today that the initial Nobel's will stated that people should be rewarded for the discoveries made in the preceding year, but this quite often isn't followed which is understandable given the enormity of amount of work that goes into modern-day discoveries that are considered for Nobel prizes.
- veddox
Georg Nagel gave the first few biology lectures I had at uni. People were already saying that he was due for the Nobel Prize - I'm happy for him the committee now came to the same conclusion!
The lectures themselves were, unfortunately, quite boring. This was the introductory course for freshmen, covering a lot of material that students ought to have learnt in school already. Much of the time, the professor appeared to be as bored by it as many of the students were, but I guess it had to be done and someone had to do it...