Dr Thomas Edwards

Biography

Thomas Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Tropical Disease Biology at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), where he leads diagnostic test development activities in the Centre for Drugs and Diagnostics Research. His lab focuses on the early-stage development of diagnostic assays, particularly for bacterial infections and antimicrobial resistance, and tropical fever. Much of Thomas’s work involves molecular diagnostics, and novel ways to implement these in resource poor settings. I also have an interest in antimicrobial resistance mechanisms, particularly for beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combination drugs in gram negative bacteria.

He holds hold a BSc in Biomedical Science from the University of Sheffield, and an MSc in Industrial biotechnology from Liverpool John Moores University. His PhD, completed at LJMU in 2014 in collaboration with Public Health England and a commercial partner, involved the development of a microfluidic DNA extraction methodology and subsequent isothermal detection assays, for a fully integrated platform for the detection of a panel of Sexually transmitted infections.

Research interests

Thomas is the diagnostic theme lead within the National Institute for Health and Care Research Global Health Research Group on Zoonotic Associated Febrile illness (ZAFI, £3 million funding, 2024-2028), a collaboration between LSTM, the University of Liverpool, and a number of East African Research institutes. The group aims to improve how zoonotic febrile illnesses are diagnosed and managed in children in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Key pathogens within this project include brucellosis, leptospirosis, and arboviruses.

Thomas is interested in the development of novel tests for emerging viruses and pathogens with outbreak potential, and recently received funding from the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team, The Pandemic Institute, and the Medical Research Council in this area. Projects have included implementing molecular tools for determining mpox clades/lineages in collaboration with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and developing rapid sensors for dengue and mpox infection.

He is an Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard Awardee, for a project investigating the drivers of transposon mediated beta-lactamase gene amplification, which has shown to be an important cause of resistance to beta-lactamase/inhibitor combinations. He has several other ongoing projects in the area of antimicrobial resistance and clinical microbiology, including outbreak investigation in Liverpool City Region hospitals, and the use of IFTR for identifying bacterial species from clinical samples.

Teaching

Thomas co-directs the MRes in Tropical Health and Infectious Disease Research.

He lectures across a variety of modules on diagnostics, zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance, and research methods.

He has supervised more than 20 BSc, MSc, and MRes students and currently supervises six PhD students, in the UK, Malawi and Ghana.

 

Selected research publications

Syndromic Diagnostics for Travelers’ Diarrhea Near-Patient Field-Expedient Testing in Resource-Limited Settings – Journal: Open Forum Infectious Diseases – Published: 17th February 2026

Development and evaluation of a novel RT-qPCR assay for detection of Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever virus using the Genedrive(R) point-of-care platform – Journal: Journal of Clinical Virology – Published: 1st February 2026

Multiplex PCR to Differentiate Monkeypox Virus Clades – Journal: Emerging Infectious Diseases – Published: 1st February 2026

Comparison of the analytical and clinical sensitivities of 34 rapid antigen tests with prevalent SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK – Journal: Microbiology spectrum – Published: 7th October 2025

A 46-week outbreak of ertapenem-resistant, non-carbapenemase encoding Klebsiella pneumoniae ST45 in a paediatric cardiac unit involving shared equipment, United Kingdom, April 2022 to February 2023 – Journal: Eurosurveillance – Published: 1st October 2025

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