STOCKHOLM, Oct 5 (Reuters) – American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries on light and optogenetics that have helped understand how the brain works.
The Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university said Deisseroth, 54, Hegemann, 71, and Nagel, 73, were selected for their “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
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,” Perlmann said.
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.
Researchers 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.
Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel will share a prize sum amounting to 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million).
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 laureates this 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,” Perlmann 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 One and World War Two.
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.
Last year, 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 December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death, when laureates receive their awards in ceremonies attended by Sweden’s and Norway’s royal families and are feted at gala banquets held in their honour.
(Reporting by Niklas Pollard and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm and Bhanvi Satija in London; additional reporting by Simon Johnson, Greta Rosen Fondahn, Marie Mannes, Terje Solsvik and Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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