Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their research in optogenetics. Krista Conger explaining what optogenetics is.
Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, a Stanford University professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine “for discoveries leading to optogenetics, which makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain.” He shares the award with Peter Hegemann from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Georg Nagel from the University of Würzburg in Germany.
“I couldn’t be happier because the trio that the committee picked spans the progression from the early algal explorations all the way to advanced neuroscience experiments, so this prize really captures the full journey of discovery,” said Deisseroth, who is the D. H. Chen Professor and a professor in the schools of medicine and of engineering.
Deisseroth established his preeminence as a leader in neuroscience by developing a process to insert light-sensitive microbial proteins called opsins into mammalian brain cells, allowing selected cells to be controlled by light.
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“Optogenetics is an engine for discovery,” Deisseroth said. “It’s for probing complex systems at the fundamental level of cells. We want to understand how the brain works as an intact system to carry out complex cognitions, behaviors and perceptions while being anchored and grounded in the elemental cellular level. We are already taking steps to understand healthy brain function and understand how things go wrong. This is the key principle of optogenetics: precise causal perturbation. Then you can search for ways to perhaps correct the anomalies. Once you know the cells that are important in a symptom or in correcting a symptom, then you can design any method you like to target their activity.”
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Ultimately, Deisseroth hopes to tease apart the functions of the working brain to treat severe disorders such as Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, autism, addiction, depression and anxiety.
Explaining optogenetics to a 10 year old:
When asked to describe his work as if he were explaining it to a 10-year-old, Deisseroth said, “We can use light to turn on or off cells in the brain. We do that using small molecules that we get from single-celled organisms. Isn’t that cool, that we can take a molecule from algae and it lets me turn cells on or off, to stimulate them, or to turn them on or off with the flip of a switch — a laser? That’s how any 10-year-old would understand a system: by poking it. That’s what we’re doing with optogenetics. We’re poking the brain.”