The Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center has recruited two additional heart and lung transplant physicians, boosting the size and scope of its adult and pediatric cardiothoracic transplant programs.

Both joined Hopkins Aug. 7.

Johns V. Conte Jr. is the new director of the heart and heart-lung transplant programs, as well as co-director of the lung transplant program. Conte, who was formerly director of the heart and heart-lung transplant program at the University of Maryland, received his medical degree from Georgetown University in 1986 and completed cardiothoracic surgery and transplant residency training at Stanford University.

His research interests include organ preservation for transplantation, mechanisms involved with the development of lung infection and coronary heart disease, and fluid passage through tissues of transplanted organs.

Jonathan B. Orens is medical director for the lung transplant program. Orens also comes to Hopkins from the University of Maryland, where he held the same position. He received his medical degree from Maryland in 1987 and completed a pulmonary and critical care fellowship at the University of Michigan Hospital, Ann Arbor.

Orens' research interests include cardiopulmonary exercise responses following lung transplantation, lung volume reduction surgery for emphysema and the use of ultrasound with tubes used to study the windpipe and air vessels in the lungs.