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]}

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]

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 (K_ATP)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]

Ashcroft appeared (as a diner) on MasterChef during the 2011 series,^{[citation needed]} along with several other Fellows of the Royal Society.