By SUSAN JONES
The Orland Bethel Family Foundation has upped the ante in its efforts to find cures and treatments for musculoskeletal (MSK) diseases with a new $53.5 million donation to the University of Pittsburgh.
Joon Y. Lee, executive director of the the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center and a professor in Pitt’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, said this fourth gift from the foundation will help translate the research and data the center has been gathering into “something that is really meaningful for the public.”
Bethel — founder of Hillandale Farms, one of the country’s largest egg producers — has now given nearly $100 million to Pitt for the study of musculoskeletal diseases, making his foundation one of the largest donors to the University ever. Lee said the city might be “witnessing another Mellon family or Hillman family developing” in the world of Pittsburgh philanthropy.
The research Lee and his team are doing is very personal to Bethel, 90. In 2014, he sought treatment from Lee for debilitating pain from spinal stenosis. He underwent successful surgery and treatment to restore function and motion.
Since then, he has endowed the Orland Bethel Professorship in Spine Surgery for $2 million in 2018; given $25 million to set up the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center in 2023; and donated another $18.5 million in 2024 to create a biological specimen repository.
“I am so enthused behind what these people are doing and what they’re going to do,” Bethel said at a news conference last week. “They’re talking as if 15 to 20 years from now … they’re going to have people living longer and they’re going to have it to where they’re able to enjoy their lives, and that would be the greatest thing to be a part of.”
Part of the new funding will be used to translate that research from intellectual property to affecting patients’ lives, Lee said. This includes developing a curriculum focused on commercialization of research; creating a risk capital fund to invest in high-potential, early-stage innovation emerging from the MSK research center; and working with Pitt.INC to get innovations to market.
“What I want to develop, as a sub-umbrella of that, is a more specific, MSK-related, commercializable product pathway,” Lee said.
Early successes
The progress the Bethel MSK Research Center has made in the first two years since the initial $25 million donation has been phenomenal, Lee said.
With the first round of funding, the labs on campus that study musculoskeletal issues, which were traditionally siloed, were all brought together. “When you bring them into one location, I think it really increases collaboration, increases discussions, and we’ve already kind of seen that,” he said.
He also credited the office of Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences, and the University, for initially finding temporary space for the MSK research center and, within a year, renovating 22,000 square feet of space in the Biomedical Science Tower for a permanent location. The center now houses all of the core MSK laboratories.
In addition, the biobank funded by Bethel’s $18.5 million donation has far exceeded its first year goals. Lee said they had hoped to collect specimens from 200 patients, but instead reached 350, and they are up to about 12,000 specimens in storage.
“Our notoriety for that is actually spreading more quickly than I thought,” he said, noting they are developing a website and searchable database of the specimens that also will be available to researchers outside of Pitt. “Without even advertising, we’ve had multiple people already reach out to us and talk about collaborations.”
More expansion
The new money will help expand the biobank and modernize the database and storage. Lee said there are currently around 150 different biobanks at the Oakland campus for all different types of diseases that researchers are interested in. “It would be wonderful to have all those biobanks in one storage space under one database. And so some of our funding will go to that.”
There also will be upgrades to infrastructure, like freezers, and additional staff to catalog the specimens.
The center is actively recruiting new faculty into the research center. The latest donation will fund three endowed professorships.
Lee said they also are supporting outside researchers, particularly more junior faculty, through the Bethel Fellow program. This helps get Pitt’s name out to the research community about all the good work being done here on MSK diseases.
Around 100 people applied as fellows the first year and 10 were accepted. This year, 98 applied. An inaugural Bethel Musculoskeletal Research Center symposium was held in September, with the fellows attending, touring campus and talking to Pitt investigators.
The new donation also will fund the Bethel Prize to recognize more prominent researchers in musculoskeletal disorders. They also would visit campus for a lecture and then “take their impression of (the center) place back to their institutions and other places they visit. Again, to put our name out internationally.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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