Frances Ashcroft

Dame Frances Mary Ashcroft (born 1952) is a British ion channel physiologist.^[4][2][5] She is Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Research Professor at the University Laboratory of Physiology at the University of Oxford. She is a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. Her research group has an international reputation for work on insulin secretion, type II diabetes and neonatal diabetes.^[6][7] Her work with Andrew Hattersley has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy.^{[8][9][4][10]}

Professor Dame Frances Ashcroft DBE FRS FMedSci
Born	Frances Mary Ashcroft (1952-02-15) 15 February 1952 (age 73)[1]
Nationality	British
Education	Talbot Heath School
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Awards	UNESCO award (2012) Croonian Lecture (2013)
Scientific career
Fields	Physiology[2]
Institutions	University of Oxford Trinity College, Oxford University of Leicester University of California, Los Angeles
Thesis	Calcium electrogenesis in insect muscle (1978)
Website	www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/group-leaders/frances-ashcroft

Education

Ashcroft was educated at Talbot Heath School and the University of Cambridge where she was awarded a degree in Natural Sciences followed by a PhD in zoology in 1978.^[11][12]

Career and research

Ashcroft then did postdoctoral research at the University of Leicester and the University of California at Los Angeles.^[13] Ashcroft is a director of Oxion: Ion Channels and Disease Initiative, a research and training programme on integrative ion channel research, funded by the Wellcome Trust.^[14]

Ashcroft's research focuses on ATP-sensitive potassium (K_ATP)channels and their role in insulin secretion. Ashcroft is working towards explaining how a rise in the blood glucose concentration stimulates the release of insulin from the pancreatic beta-cells, what goes wrong with this process in type 2 diabetes, and how drugs used to treat this condition exert their beneficial effects.^[15] Ashcroft has authored a few science and popular science books based on ion channel physiology:

• Ion Channels and Disease: Channelopathies on channelopathic diseases^[16]
• Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival^[17]
• The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body^[18]

Her work has helped people with neonatal diabetes, a very rare disease, switch from insulin injections to oral drug therapy.^[2]

Honours and awards

Ashcroft was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999.^[19] In 2007 Ashcroft was awarded the Walter B. Cannon Award, the highest honour bestowed by the American Physiological Society.^[20] She was one of five 2012 winners of the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.^[21]

Ashcroft was awarded an honorary degrees of Doctor of the University from the Open University in 2003 and Doctor of Science from the University of Leicester on 13 July 2007.^[12]

Ashcroft was awarded the Croonian Medal and Lecture by the Royal Society in 2013.^[22]

In the 2015 Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) 'for services to Medical Science and the Public Understanding of Science'.^[23] She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 1999.^[24]

A. S. Byatt's novel A Whistling Woman is half dedicated to Ashcroft.^[25]

Personal life

Ashcroft appeared (as a diner) on MasterChef during the 2011 series,^{[citation needed]} along with several other Fellows of the Royal Society.