Frances Ashcroft

Frances Ashcroft

Frances Ashcroft (Frances Mary Ashcroft) was born on February 15th, 1952 and is currently 73 years old. Ashcroft attended the University of Cambridge where she received a BA degree as well as a PhD degree.

Frances Ashcroft is an ion channel researcher and medical physiologist. She is also an Oxford Centre for Gene Function director, Trinity College, Oxford fellow, and Research Professor at the University of Oxford where she works at the University Laboratory of Physiology.

At Oxford, she set up a lab where she investigated how a rise in blood sugar levels prompted the pancreatic beta cells to release insulin. She then studied how this process can sometimes go wrong.

In recent times, Frances Ashcroft has been focusing on a rare genetic form of neonatal diabetes which usually develops post-birth. Working with her colleagues, she has provided evidence to show that the disease may be caused by mutations in ATP-sensitive potassium channels.

Through studying how the potassium channels work, interventions have been developed that make it possible for patients to switch to oral drug therapies and away from insulin injections. Moreover, the studies Frances has conducted have critical implications on how to understand and treat type 2 diabetes.

For her work, Frances Ashcroft has been elected 1999 Fellow of the Royal Society and won the European Laureate for the L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Award in 2012.

Life at the Extremes which Frances Ashcroft published in 2000 is an exploration of human survival and how we adapt on the physiological level to make it possible to survive in some of the most extreme conditions.

Ashcroft asks questions such as why is it possible for mountaineers to summit Mt. Everest without extra oxygen yet dies if an airplane loses cabin pressure at the same altitude. Why do astronauts faint when they attempt to stand after coming back from a mission in space?

Frances Ashcroft’s The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body is a work that tells of how the human body generates electricity by manipulating sodium and potassium. Inside all human cells are ion cells that let potassium and sodium in or out and in that process supply the cells with what they need.

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Frances Ashcroft: F.A.Q