On Sept. 9, 2026, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award honors two physician scientists for the identification of orexin, a brain peptide that maintains wakefulness, and for discovering that orexin deficiency causes uncontrolled sleep in narcolepsy.

Through an astounding experimental intersection, Emmanuel Mignot (Stanford University School of Medicine) and Masashi Yanagisawa (University of Tsukuba) revealed a key insight into the nature of sleep. Yanagisawa began with an intriguing cellular protein of unknown function. Through an ambitious biochemical approach, he unearthed peptides that animate it and demonstrated that the resulting signaling system keeps animals awake.

Mignot started, in contrast, with clear physiology—the disease narcolepsy. Individuals with this neurological disorder succumb to bouts of sleepiness, and the most common form prompts sudden loss of muscle tone and even collapse. In a heroic feat of genetic sleuthing, Mignot tracked the source of inherited narcolepsy in dogs. His venture led to the same protein that Yanagisawa was studying. Their work has cracked open a molecular dissection of sleep regulation, reinforced the immune system’s involvement in human narcolepsy, and pointed toward new treatments for this illness and other sleep disturbances. In the United States, narcolepsy affects at least 1 in 2000 people. Experts believe that many cases are never diagnosed.