Frances Ashcroft

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2012

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Jim Al-Khalili talks to this year's winner of the L'Oreal -UNESCO Woman in Science award, Frances Ashcroft. After decades spent studying the link between blood sugar and insulin, she talks about the absolute thrill of discovery as well as the long lean years "in a cloud of not knowing". It's very rare indeed for a scientist to see any medical benefit from their research but Frances Ashcroft has been lucky. Her scientific understanding of a key biochemical mechanism in our pancreatic cells has helped transform the lives of hundreds of children who are born with diabetes, enabling them to come off insulin injections and instead take a daily pill. Producer: Anna Buckley And yet, thirty years on, it's still not clear precisely what goes wrong with the mechanism in the much more common Type II diabetes, now affecting hundreds of millions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult?
0:06.0	What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are?
0:10.0	I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas.
0:16.4	Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth.
0:23.0	Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003.
0:27.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.0	Thank you for downloading The Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4.
0:34.0	My guest today is Francis Ashcroft,
0:37.0	orchid lover, sailor and scientist who spent the last 30 years
0:41.0	studying the link between blood sugar and insulin and why for some people
0:45.2	with diabetes this mechanism breaks down.
0:48.1	It has she says been a long journey of discovery with more than its fair share of both exhilarating moments and disappointing
0:54.1	false storms. Earlier this year she won the prestigious L'Oreal UNESCO Women in Science Award.
1:00.4	In 1999 she was made a fellow of the Royal Society and true to the society's motto
1:05.5	Take Nobody's Word for it. She has through clever detective work and careful observation
1:11.5	built up her own in-depth understanding of this one vital
1:15.8	mechanism in the cells of the pancreas and in so doing transformed the lives of
1:20.4	hundreds of children who suffer from a rare form of diabetes that
1:24.3	until recently was simply not recognized.
1:27.0	Francis Ashcroft, welcome to the life scientific.
1:30.0	I wonder are you motivated more by the medical benefits that might result from your research
1:37.0	or by what the physicist Richard Feinman once referred to as the pleasure of finding things out.
	...

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