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A Stanford University professor was awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for pioneering work that helped give scientists an unprecedented way to control and study nerve cells using light.
Karl Deisseroth, a professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, shares the prize with Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University of Berlin and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg. In a statement on Monday, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, cited the three scientists “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
The prize, worth 12 million Swedish kronor or around $1.2 million, will be divided equally among the three laureates.
Award-winning discovery
Their work transformed a biological curiosity found in a single-celled alga into a powerful tool for neuroscience, according to the Nobel Foundation. Hegemann and Nagel discovered a protein called channelrhodopsin in Chlamydomonas, an alga that uses light to navigate. When exposed to blue light, the protein opens a channel that allows charged ions to flow through the cell, producing an electrical impulse.
Later, Deisseroth saw a way to use that mechanism to investigate the brain. He introduced the gene for channelrhodopsin into rat nerve cells, making the cells responsive to blue light. In 2005, he published the breakthrough showing that light could be used to trigger nerve signals.
Two years later, he demonstrated that the technique could control nerve cells in the brains of living mice. The approach became known as optogenetics.
Unlike many earlier methods for studying the brain, optogenetics allows researchers to manipulate particular groups of nerve cells with precise timing. Deisseroth’s discovery has helped scientists investigate neural circuits involved in memories, emotions and behavior — including circuits relevant to neurological and psychiatric disorders, the Nobel Foundation said.
“Optogenetics provides opportunities for mapping the brain in a way that we could once only dream of,” said Per Svenningsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine.
Background
Deisseroth was born on Nov. 18, 1971, in Boston, Massachusetts, according to the university website.
He earned his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard, graduating summa cum laude, before earning his Ph.D. in neuroscience and M.D. from Stanford. He completed medical internship and adult psychiatry residency training at Stanford and is board-certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
According to the Stanford University website, he remains a practicing psychiatrist at the educational institution, where he specializes in affective disorders and autism spectrum disorder and uses both medication and neural stimulation in treating patients.
