Dr Thomas Darton

DTM&H MRCP(UK)(Infectious Diseases) FRCPath

Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine and Population Health

Florey Advanced Clinical Fellow

Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases

t.darton@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 215 9507
+44 114 226 8874 (Clinical Secretaries)

Full contact details

Dr Thomas Darton
Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine and Population Health
LU109
The Medical School
Beech Hill Road
Sheffield
S10 2RX
Profile

For enquiries, please contact – ClinMed-Operational@sheffield.ac.uk

I graduated from Nottingham in 2002 and completed general medical training in Sheffield. During an Academic Clinical Fellowship in Sheffield I became interested in the host-pathogen interactions occurring during invasive bacterial infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis.

Between 2010 and 2014 I worked on the development of human challenge models of enteric fever (Salmonella Typhi and S. Paratyphi A) at the Oxford Vaccine Group (Oxford) and explored how these models relate to natural infection and how they might accelerate vaccine and diagnostic development. This work led to further studies of diagnostics, disease burden and vaccine implementation in endemic regions.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major threat to global health and, for human-restricted pathogens such as S. Typhi, prevention by vaccination is a vital control strategy. After completion of specialist training and a Clinical Lectureship placement at the Oxford Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I joined the Florey Institute for Host-Pathogen Interactions and the School of Medicine & Population Health in 2018 as a Florey Advanced Fellow.

Research interests
  1. Investigating the drivers of antimicrobial resistance in lower- and middle-income country settings.

  2. Understanding the role and developing vaccines and diagnostics for enteric fever and other causes of non-specific febrile illness in low-resource settings.

  3. The ethical use of human challenge studies to advance the discovery and translation of tools for patient benefit.

Current Projects

  • Investigating the effects of environmental exposure to fluoroquinolone-resistant Enterobacteriaceae on the gastrointestinal microbiota of children in Vietnam (AMS CLSG 2016–2018).
  • STRATAA: Understanding the burden of enteric fever in Africa and Asia: a study of transmission and antibiotic resistance to improve diagnostics and inform vaccine strategies (Wellcome Trust Strategic Award 2015–2019).
  • Identification of serological diagnostic markers for typhoid fever by protein microarray (BMFG 2015–2017)
Publications

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Journal articles

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Journal articles

Chapters

Preprints

Teaching interests

I teach on the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (DTM&H) in Sheffield, the Diploma of Mountain Medicine in Nepal and Masters courses in molecular medicine and vaccinology. I am also involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, demonstrating and supervision at the Medical School.

Professional activities and memberships
  • Member of the British HIV Association, British Infection Association, and the British Global and Travel Health Association.
  • Member of the HIC-VAC network