Biography:Frances Ashcroft

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Short description: British geneticist and physiologist
Dame

Frances Ashcroft

DBE FRS FMedSci
Born
Frances Mary Ashcroft

(1952-02-15) 15 February 1952 (age 72)[1]
NationalityBritish
EducationTalbot Heath School
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
AwardsUNESCO award (2012)
Croonian Lecture (2013)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysiology[2]
Institutions
ThesisCalcium electrogenesis in insect muscle (1978)
Websitewww.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/group-leaders/frances-ashcroft

Dame Frances Mary Ashcroft DBE FRS FMedSci (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]

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 (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.[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 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.

References

  1. ↑ ",". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. 2014. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U5819. https://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U5819.  (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Women in Physiology". https://static.physoc.org/app/uploads/2019/06/19100058/Women-in-Physiology-.pdf. 
  3. ↑ "Frances Ashcroft". The Life Scientific. 2012-05-15. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Wray, Susan; Tansey, Elizabeth, eds (2015). Women physiologists : centenary celebrations and beyond. London: The Physiological Society. ISBN 9780993341007. OCLC 922032986. https://static.physoc.org/app/uploads/2019/06/19095724/Women_physiologists_PRINT_FINAL.pdf. 
  5. ↑ Frances Ashcroft publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (Subscription content?)
  6. ↑ 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. Bibcode: 1984Natur.312..446A. 
  7. ↑ Ashcroft, F. M.; Rorsman, P. (1989). "Electrophysiology of the pancreatic β-cell". Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 54 (2): 87–143. doi:10.1016/0079-6107(89)90013-8. PMID 2484976. 
  8. ↑ 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. 
  9. ↑ "Frances Ashcroft talks to ReAgent about career advice for scientists". 11 June 2014. http://www.reagent.co.uk/blog/careers-in-science/. 
  10. ↑ Ashcroft, Frances M.; Harrison, Donna E.; Ashcroft, Stephen 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. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 6095103. Bibcode: 1984Natur.312..446A.  closed access
  11. ↑ Ashcroft, Frances Mary (1978). Calcium electrogenesis in insect muscle. copac.jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 500372918. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.448200.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Oration for Professor Frances Ashcroft by Professor Gordon Campbell. On the occasion of being awarded Doctor of Science summer 2007". University of Leicester. http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/2000-2009/2007/07/nparticle.2007-07-16.3558954245. 
  13. ↑ "Frances Ashcroft, Professorial Fellow in Physiology". Trinity College, University of Oxford. 2014. http://www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/frances-ashcroft/. 
  14. ↑ "Welcome to Oxion". Oxion: Ion Channels and Disease Initiative, Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and MRC Hartwell. http://oxion.dpag.ox.ac.uk/. 
  15. ↑ "Frances Ashcroft — GLAXOSMITHKLINE Royal Society Professor". Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford. 2015. http://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/group-leaders/frances-ashcroft. 
  16. ↑ 1999, Academic Press, ISBN:0120653109
  17. ↑ 2000, HarperCollins, ISBN:0141046538
  18. ↑ 2012, W. W. Norton and Company, ISBN:0006551254
  19. ↑ Anon (1999). "Dame Frances Ashcroft DBE FMedSci FRS". London: The Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/people/frances-ashcroft-11008/.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --
  20. ↑ "Oxford physiology professor earns APS' Walter B. Cannon Award" (Press release). American Physiological Society. 27 April 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2015 – via EurekAlert!.
  21. ↑ "Ashcroft receives L'oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science". 8 November 2011. http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/111108_3.html. 
  22. ↑ "Croonian Lecture—List of lecturers: 21st century". Royal Society. http://royalsociety.org/awards/croonian-lecture/. 
  23. ↑ No. 61256. 13 June 2015. p. B8. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/61256/supplement/B8 
  24. ↑ "Professor Dame Frances Ashcroft - The Academy of Medical Sciences". https://acmedsci.ac.uk/fellows/fellows-directory/ordinary-fellows/professor-frances-ashcroft. 
  25. ↑ Newman, Jenny; Friel, James (2003). "An interview with A. S. Byatt". Cerles Review. http://www.cercles.com/interviews/byatt.html. Retrieved 11 September 2010. "I remember sitting at high table with my friend, Professor Frances Ashcroft, to whom A Whistling Woman is half dedicated.". 



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