By Kat Procyk
The Orland Bethel Family Foundation, a powerful supporter of the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences, raised its contributions to the University to nearly $100 million with an additional $53.5 million to expand the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center (BMRC). The gift, announced Jan. 21, 2026, will grow the center’s research, innovation and training efforts.
The strategic gift will create three endowed professorships, launch an award program for mid-career researchers and thought leaders, improve recruitment and retention of key BMRC leaders, develop a commercialization-focused curriculum, connect researchers with venture capital, and better couple the BMRC with industry leaders to ensure it is producing the researchers and leaders most in demand inside and outside of academia.
“This multifaceted gift will transform the BMRC into not only a leader in research and training but also a powerful economic engine for the region, attracting investment and creating new companies,” said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine. “The BMRC is already at the forefront of global discovery; it will soon be the leader in commercialization in the field of treating musculoskeletal disease and improving patient outcomes through personalized medicine.”
Joon Y. Lee, inaugural executive director of the BMRC, said: “In the few short years the BMRC has existed, it has already become a leader in developing treatments for arthritis and other painful conditions affecting millions of people worldwide.”
Lee, of the Pitt Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and UPMC, who holds the Orland Bethel Professorship in Spine Surgery, added: “The BMRC BioBank, in its first year, is collecting, processing, and cataloging samples for researchers around the globe.” He continued: “We are accelerating discovery of biomarkers and therapeutic targets, enhancing our understanding of musculoskeletal disease and improving patient outcomes in ways that will forever change how we approach these debilitating diseases.”
The gift will provide investments to both the Pitt Idea Navigation to Commercialization (Pitt.INC) program and BMRC BioBank, both of which are part of the Pitt Health Sciences’ larger push toward product development and personalized medicine.
Pitt.INC
Pitt.INC, a collaboration between Pitt’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences, was launched in April 2025 and designed to accelerate the transformation of lab-based discoveries into real-world products and treatments that improve patient care.
The Bethel gift will allow Pitt.INC to add a specific track to the program’s elements that support musculoskeletal work. Three of those elements include $50,000 introductory grants, an incubation phase in which selected opportunities receive substantial funding to complete proof‑of‑concept work and a final investment stage that supports Pitt.INC‑developed companies as they are seeded and prepared to launch.
“Incorporating a commercialization component into this generous gift ensures that when promising discoveries happen in the lab, no time is wasted in exploring their potential to become the next life-enhancing therapy or product,” said Evan Facher, vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship at Pitt and associate dean for commercial translation at the School of Medicine.
BMRC BioBank
The BMRC Biobank, which began operating in October 2024 through a previous $18.5 million gift from the Orland Bethel Family Foundation, aims to accelerate the discovery of biomarkers and therapeutic targets in orthopaedic disease.
This most recent gift will help the BMRC BioBank expand its infrastructure—both at the research level and digitally. The BMRC BioBank plans to update its storage capacities, grow its staff, expand its access to more hospitals and increase its digital footprint through the development of a user-friendly website, digital data storage and ability to analyze the data the website collects.
Through the biobank, researchers use diseased tissue removed during surgery to study and analyze its molecular components, identifying unique biological markers potentially linked to musculoskeletal diseases. The biobank also collects blood and saliva samples to evaluate patients’ clinical outcomes and guide treatment, enabling musculoskeletal care to be tailored for personalized orthopaedic medicine.
Along with this recent gift and the launch of the BMRC BioBank, Orland Bethel and his family foundation committed $25 million in 2023 to create the BMRC and a previous $2 million gift to establish the Orland Bethel Professorship in Spine Surgery.
Orland Bethel suffered incapacitating spinal pain before turning to clinicians at UPMC, who are also scientists at Pitt, for help. Bethel, founder of Hillandale Farms, which is among the nation’s largest egg producers, received relief and restored function following surgery performed by Lee.
In October 2025, the BMRC celebrated the opening of its new lab space in Pitt’s Biomedical Science Tower on Darragh Street. The 25,000-square-foot space is home to seven of the 11 BMRC Core Labs and houses a state-of-the-art surgical training suite for UPMC orthopaedic surgery residents.