Dr. Tontonoz is Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine Dean's Scholar, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School. His Ph.D. thesis was carried out at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He completed his residency training in Pathology at the University of California, San Diego.
The focus of his laboratory is the control of gene expression by lipids and the role of nuclear receptors in lipid metabolism. His major research contributions include the delineation of role of PPAR and LXR in adipogenesis and atherosclerosis, and elucidation of mechanisms of crosstalk between metabolism, inflammation and immunity. Dr. Tontonoz is the recipient of the Richard. E. Weitzman and Gerald D. Aurbach Awards from the Endocrine Society, the Jeffrey M. Hoeg Award for Basic Science and Clinical Research from the American Heart Association, and a Bristol Myers-Squibb Freedom to Discover Award in Cardiovascular Disease. He is a past President of American Society for Clinical Investigation. Dr. Tontonoz serves on a number of editorial boards and is a Reviewing Editor for eLife and an Associate Editor of Molecular and Cellular Biology.