Dr. Jonathan Orens has been named the new director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine. The division includes over 70 full-time faculty as well as part-time clinical faculty with clinical and research expertise in a broad range of diseases including asthma, COPD, critical care, cystic fibrosis, interstitial lung disease, lung cancer, lung transplantation, neuromuscular disease, pulmonary hypertension, sarcoidosis, and sleep medicine.
Dr. Orens received his medical degree magna cum laude and completed his internship, residency and chief residency in internal medicine at the University of Maryland. He trained in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan (1991-1994), joined the faculty of the University of Maryland (1994), and came to Johns Hopkins in 1998. Dr. Orens is recognized internationally as an expert in the field of lung transplantation. His research interests are focused in lung transplant outcomes assessing risk factors for the development of chronic allograft rejection and Primary Graft Dysfunction (PGD). His work includes developing new treatment strategies for these problems such as the use of the macrolide antibiotic azithromycin for the treatment of Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome (BOS)/chronic allograft rejection.
Dr. Orens is committed to outstanding patient care, advancing biomedical research and education. He has a history of successful collaboration on NIH-funded institutional and multicenter studies in human lung transplantation. The Hopkins Lung Transplant Program is a member of the Lung Transplant Outcomes Group (LTOG), a NIH-sponsored multi-center program focused on studying the clinical and genetic risk factors for PGD. Dr. Orens is also an original member of the National Emphysema Treatment Trial Steering Committee as co-investigator for the University of Maryland-Johns Hopkins investigation site, a study of lung volume reduction surgery versus medical management for the treatment of emphysema.