Frances Ashcroft
Dame Frances Mary Ashcroft (born 1952) is a British 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. Her work with Andrew Hattersley has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy. 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. Career and research Ashcroft then did postdoctoral research at the University of Leicester and the University of California at Los Angeles. 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. 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