Debbie L Shawcross

Debbie Lindsay Shawcross is a British physician and clinician who is a professor at King's College London. Her research looks to better understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underpin chronic liver disease, with a focus on the gut-liver-brain axis.

Early life and education Shawcross completed her medical degree at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in 1996. During her undergraduate studies, she spent a year at Imperial College London, where she completed an intercalated degree in physiology and clinical pharmacology. She moved to University College London for her doctoral studies, where she studied hepatic encephalopathy.

Research and career In 2008, Shawcross was awarded a Higher Education Funding Council for England Clinical Senior Fellowship. The gut-liver-brain axis describes the relationships between the gut, liver and brain. These relationships involve the vagus nerve, the haptic portal vein and the transport of metabolites. Shawcross has shown that people with cirrhosis have dysfunctional gut microbiome (a reduced diversity of species, as well as multi-drug resistant organisms), which can impact their likelihood to suffer from liver disease. Most treatments involve the combination of an antibiotic and a laxative, which impacts the microbiome. Shawcross showed that bacteriophages could be used to eliminate alcoholic liver disease.

In 2023, Shawcross hosted a pop-up liver clinic for parliamentarians with The British Liver Trust.

Selected publications