Rebecca Sitsapesan

Sitsapesan later took up a post at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, London where she was made a British Heart Foundation lecturer in 1991. In 2001, she moved to the University of Bristol where she was made the Professor of Pharmacology in 2011.^[4] While there, she studied the role of FKBP12.6 and cADPR molecules in regulating the channels through which calcium ions flow.^[5] She also worked on the relation between protein kinase C and excessive amounts of calcium release into heart muscle, which can cause arrhythmias.^[6][7]

In August 2013, Sitsapesan moved to the University of Oxford, taking up the post of Professor of Pharmacology.^[8] She became a Tutorial Fellow in medicine at Hertford College in 2014,^[2] and was a member of the college's governing body and its academic committee.^[9] She headed a group studying ion channels and the release of Ca²⁺ from intracellular stores.^[10][11] She also collaborated with Antony Galione on the type 2 two-pore channel and the effects of ion release channels on lysosomes.^[3][10]

She retired from her posts in 2019 due to ill health, becoming Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology and an Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College.^[12] She continued to contribute to and publish papers and supervise her laboratory until a few days before her death.^[3][13]

Sitsapesan was a Christian.^[3] She was married and had children.^[3] She died on 2 June 2022 at the age of 62.^[1][3]