Frances Ashcroft

Dame Frances Ashcroft
Born Frances Mary Ashcroft
(1952-02-15) 15 February 1952[1]
Nationality British
Fields
Institutions
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Thesis Calcium electrogenesis in insect muscle (1978)
Notable awards
Website
www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/group-leaders/frances-ashcroft
Frances Ashcroft's voice
from the BBC programme The Life Scientific, 15 May 2012.[2]

Dame Frances Mary Ashcroft, DBE, FRS, FMedSci (born 1952) is a British geneticist and ion channel physiologist. 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.[3][4] Her work with Professor Andrew Hattersley has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy.[5][6]

Education

After attending Talbot Heath School Ashcroft gained a degree in Natural Sciences, and then a PhD in zoology from Cambridge in 1978.[7][8] Ashcroft then did post-doctoral research at the University of Leicester and the University of California at Los Angeles.[9]

Career

Ashcroft is a Director of OXION: Ion Channels and Disease Initiative, a research and training programme on integative ion channel research, funded by the Wellcome Trust.[10]

Research

Ashcroft's research focuses on ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP)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.[11] Ashcroft has authored a few science and popular science books based on ion channel physiology:

Honours and awards

Ashcroft was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999.[15] In 2007 Ashcroft was awarded the Walter B. Cannon Award, the highest honour bestowed by the American Physiological Society.[16] She was one of five 2012 winners of the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.[17]

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.[8]

Ashcroft delivered the Croonian Lecture at the Royal Society in 2013.[18]

In the 2015 Queen's 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'.[19]

Personal life

Ashcroft appeared (as a diner) on MasterChef during the 2011 series, along with several other Fellows of the Royal Society.

References

  1. ASHCROFT, Prof. Frances Mary. Who's Who. 2014 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription required)
  2. "Frances Ashcroft". The Life Scientific. 2012-05-15. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
  3. Ashcroft, F. M.; Harrison, D. E.; Ashcroft, S. J. H. (1984). "Glucose induces closure of single potassium channels in isolated rat pancreatic β-cells". Nature. 312 (5993): 446–448. doi:10.1038/312446a0. PMID 6095103.
  4. Ashcroft, F. M.; Rorsman, P. (1989). "Electrophysiology of the pancreatic β-cell". Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 54 (2): 87. doi:10.1016/0079-6107(89)90013-8. PMID 2484976.
  5. Ashcroft, F. M. (1988). "Adenosine 5'-Triphosphate-Sensitive Potassium Channels". Annual Review of Neuroscience. 11: 97–118. doi:10.1146/annurev.ne.11.030188.000525. PMID 2452599.
  6. Frances Ashcroft talks to ReAgent about career advice for scientists
  7. Ashcroft, Frances Mary (1978). Calcium electrogenesis in insect muscle (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
  8. 1 2 "Oration for Professor Frances Ashcroft by Professor Gordon Campbell. On the occasion of being awarded Doctor of Science summer 2007.". University of Leicester. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
  9. "Frances Ashcroft, Professorial Fellow in Physiology". Trinity College, University of Oxford. 2014. Retrieved 2015-04-21.
  10. "Welcome to OXION". OXION: Ion Channels and Disease Initiative, Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and MRC Hartwell. Retrieved 2015-04-21.
  11. "Frances Ashcroft — GLAXOSMITHKLINE Royal Society Professor". Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford. 2015. Retrieved 2015-04-21.
  12. 1999, Academic Press, ISBN 0120653109
  13. 2000, Harper Collins, ISBN 0141046538
  14. 2012, W. W. Norton and Company, ISBN 0006551254
  15. "Lists of Royal Society Fellows 1660–2007". London: The Royal Society. Retrieved 6 July 2012.
  16. "Oxford physiology professor earns APS' Walter B. Cannon Award" (Press release). American Physiological Society. 27 April 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2015 via EurekAlert!.
  17. Ashcroft receives L'oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science
  18. "Croonian Lecture". Royal Society. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  19. The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 61256. p. B8. 13 June 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/24/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.