Nobel Prize in Medicine for Optogenetics Research Goes to a Dresden Scientist: TUD Researcher Stimulates Heart Cells with Light

On October 5, 2026, it was announced that the Nobel Prize in Medicine would be awarded to two researchers from Germany, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, and Karl Deisseroth from the United States. They are receiving this honor for their research in the field of optogenetics. At Stanford, Deisseroth demonstrated how nerve cells in animals that had been genetically engineered to be light-sensitive could be turned on and off in a targeted manner—almost as if using a remote control for the brain. Jürgen Czarske and his team at TU Dresden are further developing this fascinating concept for human laboratory models and organoids, thereby partially replacing animal testing—a breakthrough for neuroscience, medicine, and animal welfare.

The Chair of Measurement and Sensor System Technique (MST) and the Competence Center for Biomedical Computational Laser Systems (BIOLAS) have been conducting research on optogenetics for over 10 years. Recently, the journal *Nature* reported on a paradigm shift in optogenetics using cell cultures, in which both control and sensing are performed contactlessly using light, enabling regulated optical pacemaking as a future possibility.

The heart’s pumping function is based on electrically triggered contractions of the heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes). The resulting spatio-temporal excitation patterns synchronize heart contractions and maintain normal heart function. Cardiac arrhythmias arise primarily from disturbances in this conduction of electrical impulses—such as a spiral-shaped wavefront that can lead to tachycardia and potentially fatal ventricular fibrillation. The origins and timing of such disturbances have not yet been fully investigated. The research is conducted without animal testing and thus supports the 3R principles (replace, reduce, refine), which aim to replace animal testing, minimize its use, and reduce the burden on animals.

The team led by Dr. Lars Buettner and Prof. Jürgen Czarske from the Chair of Measurement and Sensor System Technique is modeling these phenomena in collaboration with the University Medical Center Göttingen using optogenetics, a technique in which cell activity is controlled via light-sensitive proteins. To do this, they use human cardiac muscle cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. Using specific spatial and temporal light patterns, the researchers trigger defined excitation wavefronts, enabling them to induce, observe, and control disturbances in electrical conduction in in vitro experiments in a targeted manner. The goal was to detect sudden disturbances in the wavefront in real time and restore normal conditions through adaptive light irradiation. Since image analysis and hologram-based light pattern calculation are too time-consuming, the researchers sampled the wavefront only at selected points (sparse sampling). This allowed them to drastically reduce data volume and processing time without compromising the unambiguous identification of the state. For the first time, they were thus able to demonstrate real-time control and restoration of a disrupted excitation wavefront. For the experiments, the MST Chair operates the only S1-level biosafety laboratory for genetically modified organisms at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. Conducting the experiments directly on-site in the laser laboratories avoids stress on the sensitive cell samples caused by transport. The experiments demonstrate that optical systems engineering plays a key role in optogenetics as an enabling technology.

In the future, the researchers plan to further develop their technique for three-dimensional cell structures (so-called organoids), which are considered to have high potential as physiologically relevant models in disease modeling, drug screening, precision medicine, and regenerative medicine. Contactless, optical pacemakers are also conceivable. An interesting side note is that eight years ago, Karl Deisseroth was awarded the Berthold Leibinger Prize by the company Trumpf for his work in the field of optogenetics, and that Prof. Czarske and Dr. Buettner also received a Berthold Leibinger Prize for holographic measurement technology, as early as 2008. A further development of this holographic measurement technology has now achieved a breakthrough in the measurement and control of cardiac muscle cell cultures.

Original publication:
R. Wendland, F. Schmieder, M.A. Sikandar, F.P. Knüppel, W.-H. Zimmermann, O. Bergmann, L. Büttner, J.W. Czarske, “All-optical closed-loop control of human cardiomyocyte networks exploiting holographic optogenetics,” Nat. Comm. Eng. 5, 159 (2026)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-026-00779-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-026-00779-1

Contact:
BIOLAS (Biomedical Computational Laser Systems) Competence Center
Chair of Measurement and Sensor System Technique (MST), TU Dresden
Dr. Lars Buettner
Prof. Prof. h. c. Jürgen W. Czarske
Helmholtzstraße 18, 01069 Dresden