Debrecen Award for Frances Ashcroft

Professorial Fellow Dame Frances Ashcroft has travelled to Hungary to receive the Debrecen Award for Molecular Medicine.

The Debrecen Award for Molecular Medicine was established in 2003 to recognise extraordinary achievements in the field of biomedicine. Nominees are expected to have made great strides in the life sciences leading to remarkable progress in our understanding and more efficient treatment of diseases. 

Professor Ashcroft was awarded the prize in 2020, but due to coronavirus was only able to travel and receive the award on 28 March this year. Her award citation noted her revolutionary achievements in the treatment of neonatal diabetes, through her research into proteins whose abnormal functioning leads to the development of some rare, hereditary forms of diabetes. Her award was presented at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Debrecen by László Csernoch, the scientific vice-chancellor of DE, and Dean László Mátyus.

Professor Ashcroft has also been awarded the Vanderbilt prize in Biomedical Science, which she will receive later in the year. This prize, awarded by the USA’s Vanderbilt University, honours and recognises female scientists who both have stellar records of achievement and have contributed to the mentoring of other women in science. The prize recipient gives a lecture at Vanderbilt, will serve as a mentor to the Vanderbilt Prize Scholar, and receives an honorarium.

Professor Ashcroft is a globally renowned physiologist whose research has significantly advanced our understanding of insulin secretion from pancreatic beta-cells in both health and disease. She discovered a key step in the process by which an increase in the blood sugar level after a meal leads to secretion of the hormone insulin. Her collaborative work with Professor Hattersley on neonatal diabetes enabled children born with this rare genetic form of diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy.