Bio of Peter Tontonoz, MD, PhD

Peter Tontonoz is the Frances and Albert Piansky Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and of Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Tontonoz received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tontonoz’s laboratory endeavors to understand regulatory pathways that govern cholesterol, fatty acid and phospholipid metabolism. His work has helped to reveal fundamental mechanisms by which animals maintain cellular and whole-body lipid homeostasis. His group has elucidated pathways for the control of lipid uptake, transport and efflux, and has shown how these pathways impact the function of immune cells and metabolic tissues in both physiology and disease. Dr. Tontonoz has an h-index of 111, has published more than 230 research articles, and his work has been cited more than 65,000 times.

Dr. Tontonoz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has received a number of national awards, including the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award from the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Richard Weitzman Award and the Gerald D. Aurbach Award from the Endocrine Society, and the Jeffrey Hoeg Award from the American Heart Association. Dr. Tontonoz serves on many editorial boards, including those of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, eLife, Genes & Development, and Diabetes.