Tony Goldstone attended medical school at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and trained in general medicine, adult endocrinology and diabetes at the Hammersmith, St. Bartholomew’s and Royal London Hospitals in London. He obtained his Ph.D. from Imperial College London on the hypothalamic control of feeding and metabolism.

He has researched and published widely on hormonal control of appetite, neuroendocrine, hypothalamic and metabolic abnormalities in obesity and the genetic Prader-Willi syndrome, particularly investigating the causes of hyperphagia, through pre-clinical, clinical, post-mortem, genetic, interventional, fat and brain imaging studies. This includes work as a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam and the Division of Pediatric Genetics at the University of Florida, USA.

He was a Senior Clinician Scientist in the Metabolic and Molecular Imaging Group, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Imperial College London until 2014. He is now a Clinical Reader (Associate Professor) in PsychoNeuroEndocrinology in the Division of Psychiatry, Department of Brain Sciences, at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London. His research group investgates the neurobiology of the body-brain axis in modifying eating and addictive behaviours in obesity, and smoking and alcohol dependence.

His research programme uses comprehensive phenotyping in humans including functional and structural neuroimaging using MRI, cognitive and psychological testing, assessment of gut and pituitary hormones, metabolism, appetite and eating behaviour, to examine body-brain interactions in the regulation of food hedonics, preference and reward processing, and addictive behaviours (such as impulsivity, compulsivity, emotional reactivity and stress sensitivity) in obesity, and the influence of dietary, hormonal, pharmacological and bariatric surgical interventions, and genetic variants.

His research themes include investigating the underlying mechanisms to aid development of novel therapies of:

(i) Changes in food reward, and eating and addictive behaviours after bariatric surgery and other interventions for obesity, including gastric bypass surgery and the duodenal-jejunal endoluminal bypass liner

(ii) Links between nutritional state, gut hormones, and addictive behaviours as potential treatments for smoking and alcohol dependence, and other addictions

(iii) Pathophysiology of the genetic obesity Prader-Willi syndrome including gastrointestinal hormone abnormalities and clinical trials of novel drugs

(iv) Novel genetic causes of syndromic obesity including use of next generation sequencing and potential for personalised therapy including drug trials

v) Hormonal and metabolic influences on brain recovery after traumatic brain injury

He has been a Consultant Endocrinologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust since 2005 based at the Hammersmith Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital.

He runs specialist adult clinics for patients with Prader-Willi syndrome and genetic obesity, and endocrine dysfunction after traumatic brain injury (in a multi-disciplinary clinic with Neurology and Psychiatry), as well as in-patient work in Acute Medicine.

His public engagement work includes talks such as ‘Guts or Brain? Where hormones regulate appetite’, Food, Glorious Food! British Neuroscience Association Christmas Symposium 2011 at The Royal Society, London; ‘Obesity: what lies in weight?’, Edinburgh Science Festival 2013; ‘Separating the Fat from the Fiction: Food choices’, Edinburgh Science Festival 2014, Science Museum Lates 2015; Science Museum ‘Cravings’ exhibition in 2015, Imperial Science Festival in 2017; 'Gut Hormones in Addiction', Wellcome Trust Stage, Latitude Music Festival, 2017; 'New Insights into Understanding and Treating Obesity', Imperial College Academic Health Sciences Centre Seminar Series in 2022 (https://youtu.be/Eakd6DRg7zo).

His research has featured in several TV programs including BBC1 ‘10 Things You Need to Know about Losing Weight’, Channel 4 ‘Embarrassing Fat Bodies’, BBC Horizon ‘The Truth about Fat’, BBC2 ‘The Men Who Made us Fat’, and BBC Scotland ‘Addicted to Pleasure’, BBC2 Horizon ‘Why are we Getting So Fat?’, Channel 4 ‘Secrets of our Favourite Snacks’, ITV1 Tonight ‘Fat: The Healthy Option?’, BBC 1 ‘Food: Truth or Scare’, ITV1 ‘The Junk Food Experiment’, BBC1 The One Show ‘The science of being Hangry’, and in the BBC Science video ‘What is fat?’.