Robert Terkeltaub is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego, where he joined the faculty in 1985 after completing his Immunopathology postdoctoral research training at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
His research achievements include works in translational inflammation and skeletal and arterial biology, clinical trials, management guidelines, and outcomes. With lab trainees and mentees, he published pioneering work in innate immunity-modulated and metabolically regulated chondrocyte pro-catabolic and pro-calcifying differentiation therapy targets for diseases of pathologic calcification and tissue degeneration. This includes seminal molecular identification of ENPP1 as the principal chondrocyte PPi-generating ectoenzyme. He identified autosomal recessive ENPP1 deficiency as molecular and genetic etiology of the severe arterial-periarticular calcifying orphan disease general arterial calcification of infancy (GACI). This work led to a broader recognition of GACI, genetic screening protocols, and now the development of biologic ENPP1 enzyme replacement therapy. He serves on multiple editorial boards and NIH and foundation scientific advisory committees. Dr. Terkeltaub is a graduate of McGill University, where he completed his medicine residency and Rheumatology Fellowship.