US-German trio wins medicine Nobel for work on optogenetics

STOCKHOLM

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel are shown on the screen as they are awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. (AP Photo)

The Nobel medicine prize was awarded on Oct. 5 to U.S. psychiatrist and neurologist Karl Deisseroth and his German colleagues Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their work in the field of optogenetics.

The field helps researchers understand how specific cell types contribute to behaviors like learning, fear, addiction and movement, and may one day lead to treatments for neurological and sensory disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

“Using optogenetics, researchers have been able to reveal neural circuits governing specific memories, feelings, and behaviours relevant for neurological and psychiatric disorders,” the Nobel Assembly said.

In clinical medicine, researchers are using the method in attempts to restore sight in people with visual impairment.

“Optogenetics has fundamentally altered our understanding of the brain. Every day brings new discoveries, helping to solve one of humanity’s great mysteries: how our incredible brain works,” the Nobel Assembly said.

Last year, the medicine prize went to Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the United States and Japan’s Shimon Sakaguchi for research into how the immune system is kept in check by identifiying its “security guards”.

This year’s laureates will receive their prize — a diploma, a gold medal and a $1.2-million cheque — from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prize’s creator, scientist Alfred Nobel.

The Nobel prize for physics will be announced on Oct. 6. Physicists Sir John Pendry of Britain and David Smith of the U.S., who pioneered the concept of the “invisibility cloak,” have been seen as possible winners for years.

They showed that engineered metamaterials could bend electromagnetic waves around an object, concealing it from view.

The chemistry prize will follow tomorrow and the literature prize on Oct. 8.

Perhaps the most keenly anticipated award is that due on Oct. 9 the peace prize, the only Nobel to be awarded in Oslo.

The economics prize wraps up the Nobel season on Oct. 12.