Portland, Ore.

Two leading researchers are joining the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation – one as its chairman and the other as an adjunct professor.

Jung Yoo, M.D., who holds several leadership positions in orthopaedic surgery at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland, will join OHSU as chairman and professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation on Jan. 1.

Yoo’s frequent research collaborator at Case Western, Brian Johnstone, Ph.D., will join the department’s faculty on Dec. 1. In addition to adjunct professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, Johnstone will serve as the department’s director of research.

Yoo replaces Ted Vigeland, M.D., who has been interim chairman of orthopaedics and rehabilitation since August 2003.

Yoo said his goal is to transform the orthopaedics and rehabilitation department into a “true academic surgical program.” To do this, faculty members will be encouraged to become leaders in their subspecialties through innovation, teaching and research, and to teach residents and medical students “both the art and science” of being a surgeon.

The department will expand its basic science research program by developing a program in molecular and cellular musculoskeletal research, improving its existing biomechanics laboratory, and immediately hiring two to three new researchers. Helping lead this effort will be Johnstone, whom Yoo called “an accomplished researcher with tremendous knowledge of adult stem cells and regeneration of new musculoskeletal tissue.”

Yoo said the department’s faculty of talented surgeons holds a mix of experience and youthful enthusiasm. “This is an ideal environment where experience and innovation can co-exist to give rise to new clinical ideas and approaches that better serve our patients.”

At Case Western, Yoo serves as director of research and director of finance in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. He also is on the department’s board and is associate professor of orthopaedic surgery, and he is the attending spine surgeon at University Hospitals of Cleveland, maintaining the highest-volume spine practice in the Northern Ohio health system.

Yoo holds two patents and has been principal investigator on a number of studies funded by the Musculoskeletal Transplantation Foundation and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation on posterolateral spine fusion and chondrogenic differentiation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Loyola University of Chicago in 1980 and his medical degree from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine in 1984. He completed his residency in orthopaedic surgery Case Western and University Hospitals of Cleveland in 1990.

Johnstone is associate professor of orthopaedics at Case Western and holds secondary appointments there as associate professor of anatomy and biomedical engineering. He holds two patents related to bone marrow-derived stem cells. He is a principal investigator for two NIH-funded studies, one on in vitro chondrogenesis of bone marrow mesenchymal cells, and the other on tissue-engineered meniscus repair. He earned his bachelor’s in applied biochemistry from Brunel University in Middlesex, United Kingdom, and his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of London’s Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in 1987.

 

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