Scientists Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel win 2026 Nobel Prize in medicine

• Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries related to light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
• Optogenetics allows control of individual nerve cells in living brains, helping scientists worldwide to explore brain functions and mysteries.
• The Nobel Prize in Medicine is a prestigious award with a long history, presented annually in Stockholm, honouring groundbreaking scientific achievements.

STOCKHOLM – Scientists Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in medicine for “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”, the award-giving body said on Oct 5.

Deisseroth, a 54-year-old American, Hegemann, a 71-year-old German, and Nagel, a 73-year-old German, were selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet medical university and will receive a prize sum amounting to 12 million Swedish kronor (S$1.53 million), which is shared if there are multiple winners.

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 Institutet.

“This method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.”

In clinical trials, researchers are restoring vision to people blinded by a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, by inserting a light-sensitive protein in the retina.

They also hope optogenetics could improve cochlea implants, allowing more precise stimulation of the auditory nerve than current electrical devices.

The physiology or medicine prize traditionally opens the annual Nobel announcements, with awards in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics to follow over the coming days.

Recipients surprised and delighted

In the early 1990s, Hegemann investigated how the alga Chlamydomonas reacts to light in half a millisecond.

He hypothesised that a single protein captured light and acted as an ion channel. Nagel tested this by injecting Chlamydomonas genes into frog eggs, discovering channelrhodopsin-2 – an ion channel that opens when exposed to light.

In 2003, they published that this protein could be introduced into human and hamster cells to 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.

Perlmann said he had talked to all three Nobel laureates in the morning, and that they were surprised and delighted.

“All three said the same thing, that they thought it was absolutely wonderful to receive the prize with the other two and they call them ‘my friends’. That it’s such an honour to receive them together. So that’s something they conveyed,” he said.

Nobel Prizes awarded since 1901

The five original Nobel Prizes were created under the terms of Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel’s will and have been awarded since 1901, with only limited interruptions, chiefly during World War I and World War II.

A sixth award, the economics prize, was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank.

The medicine prize has honoured some of the most influential scientific discoveries of the past century, including Alexander Fleming’s work on penicillin, recognised in 1945, and Karl Landsteiner, who won in 1930 for his discovery of human blood groups.

In 2025, American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Japan’s Shimon Sakaguchi won the prize for work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells, creating openings for possible new treatments of diseases such as cancer.

Nobel laureates are chosen by expert committees appointed by the prize-awarding institutions.

The awards are presented in Stockholm, with the exception of the Peace Prize, which is handed out in Oslo, a tradition often linked to the union that bound Sweden and Norway during Nobel’s lifetime.

More than 125 years after Nobel signed his will, the prizes retain many of their longstanding traditions.

The celebrations culminate on Dec 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death, when laureates receive their awards in ceremonies attended by the royal families of Sweden and Norway and are feted at gala banquets held in their honour. REUTERS