Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine
University of California, San Diego

Hal M. Hoffman, M.D., is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Hoffman earned his M.D. degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1990, continuing his residency in pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina and fellowship in allergy and immunology at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Hoffman’s main research interests are genetics and inflammation. He has used a combination of positional cloning of human disease genes and mouse transgenic technology to identify the function of genes involved in human diseases. Previous and ongoing research concerns autoinflammatory disorders – a group of inflammatory diseases associated with unregulated inflammation in the absence of infection or autoimmunity.

His work has focused on the study of one of these diseases, familial cold autoinflammatory syndrome, an inherited condition characterized by recurrent episodes of rash, fever, and joint pain following exposure to cold. Dr. Hoffman’s lab identified the gene responsible for this disease as well as the immune system protein involved in the regulation of inflammation.

These studies have also led to the discovery of novel treatments for autoinflammatory disorders with implications for more common inflammatory diseases such as gout and rheumatoid arthritis.