Diane Lipscombe (born March 31, 1960) is a British neuroscientist who is a professor of neuroscience and the Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Director of Brown University’s Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science. She served as the president of the Society for Neuroscience in 2019, the world’s largest organization for the study of the brain and nervous system.
Lipscombe was named one of Fast Company’s most creative people in 2019 for her leadership at the Carney Institute, by encouraging collaboration to spur development of innovative treatments. Her lab studies the expression, regulation, and function of voltage-gated calcium channels in different regions of the nervous system. Lipscombe is interested in the role of voltage-gated calcium channels in chronic pain and neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Since 1992, she has worked closely with undergraduate and graduate students at Brown, as well as postdoctoral trainees.
Lipscombe has been recognized for her teaching, mentoring and scholarship. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020, and she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013.
Early life and education
Diane Lipscombe was born on March 31, 1960, in Edinburgh, UK. Her family moved to England in 1964, and she grew up in Orpington, Kent. In 1978, she worked as a technician at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Kent, England, under the supervision of Sir James W. Black.
A first-generation university student, Lipscombe received a B.Sc. with honors in pharmacology in 1982 and a Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1986 from the University College London, under the supervision of Humphrey P. Rang and benefitting from many wonderful discussions with David Colquhoun and the C-floor group. She completed postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Richard W. Tsien at the Yale School of Medicine from 1986 to 1988, and at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1989 to 1990.
Career
Lipscombe joined the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University in 1992, where she is currently the Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Science. She has also taught courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Lipscombe serves as the director of Brown’s Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science.
Lipscombe’s research focuses on expression, regulation and function of voltage-gated calcium ion channels. By 2020, Lipscombe had authored 50 scientific articles characterizing the voltage-gated calcium ion channel family of genes and their protein products. The topics of Lipscombe’s articles range from individual channel biophysics to the regulation of specific channel isoforms by RNA- and DNA-binding proteins, and the contribution of tissue specific channel isoforms to disease states such as chronic pain and psychiatric disorders.
Research
Lipscombe has spent her career investigating voltage-gated calcium channels (CaV channels) within different parts of the nervous system. Voltage-gated calcium channels are found in cell membranes, they typically consist of several associated proteins encoded by separate genes. Lipscombe’s lab focuses on the alpha subunit, which forms the voltage sensing and pore domains of the channel. She studies how the cellular process of alternative splicing generates multiple protein isoforms from single calcium channel genes. Alternative splicing is a feature of all 10 mammalian CaV channel alpha-subunit genes and underlies the expression of hundreds of splice isoforms — each of which can have different biophysical properties, pharmacological sensitivities, and tissue-specific expression.