Dame Frances Ashcroft, University of Oxford, was appointed recipient of the Rolf Luft Award 2024. The award ceremony took place in connection with the Jubilee Symposium on September 5th 2024. Dame Frances Ashcroft received the diploma from the Karolinska Institute’s Vice Head for Research, Marie Arsenian Henriksson. The medal was presented by Ritva Luft, former board member and Rolf Luft’s widow. Professor Kerstin Brismar granted the Rolf Luft Award 2024 in the form of a check of 10,000 Euro. The award ceremony took place at the Nobel Forum, Karolinska Institute.

In connection with the award ceremony, Dame Frances Ashcroft delivered an acclaimed award lecture entitled “Metabolic regulation of insulin secretion in health and disease”.

Thanks to Dame Frances Ashcroft’s successful research, 90% of all newborns with diabetes are today treated. This means that instead of giving children who are born with diabetes insulin via injections, the newborn is treated with tablets that are also used for patients with type 2 diabetes.

About Dame Frances Ashcroft

Frances Ashcroft is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford, Fellow of Trinity College Oxford and Fellow of the Royal Society of London. She earned her PhD at Cambridge University. She was appointed winner of the Rolf Luft Award 2024. The nomination committee, which consists of board members for the Rolf Luft Foundation for Diabetes Research, motivates the 2024-year awardee as follows:

Professor Dame Commander Frances Ashcroft has made the ground-breaking discovery that newborns with diabetes (neonatal diabetes) can be treated with tablets instead of insulin injections and thereby have an improved quality of life. This makes her a very worthy winner of the Rolf Luft Award 2024, says the board of the Rolf Luft Foundation for Diabetes Research.

Read more about previous years’ winners of the Rolf Luft Award here: Rolf Luft Award (KI.se).

(Photos: Ulf Sirborn/Bildmakarna)