Hillandale Farms owner commits another $18.5M to Pitt for orthopedic-based biobank

It’s one thing to give $25 million to advance medicine, as Greensburg’s Orland Bethel and his family foundation did last year in helping to establish a new University of Pittsburgh center for musculoskeletal research.

But Bethel, 88, founder of Hillandale Farms, didn’t stop at that.

He and his family soon recognized that even a gift that large wouldn’t finish the job. In conversations with Pitt officials, the family agreed there were ways to distinguish the new center, make it self-sustaining and use collaboration among researchers around the world and locally to improve patient outcomes.

“It was very obvious to me in the conversation that we had a mountain to climb and we had to figure out how to finance all that, and I wanted to rectify it quickly,” Bethel said.

So the Orland Bethel Family Foundation committed another $18.5 million to create a biological specimen repository within the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center (BMRC).

The repository, or biobank, isn’t like most others. In fact, it is believed to be the only orthopedic-based biobank in the Western Hemisphere, said Pitt officials in announcing the latest gift last week.

The initiative gained further momentum Tuesday as the Pitt Board of Trustees property and facilities committee endorsed using the Bethel family’s $25 million gift and another $25 million in matching university funds to establish the center and build its permanent home. It will be on the 16th floor of the Thomas E. Starzl Biomedical Science Tower.

The expenditure now goes to the full board for a final vote Thursday.

The new biobank will collect tissues and related information, potentially advancing new treatments for arthritis, osteoporosis, fragility fractures, spinal pathology and other painful conditions.

Bethel, diagnosed with spinal stenosis in 2014, already knew firsthand about severe hip and lower back pain from narrowing and squeezing of the nerves and spinal cord. He would also come to know what doctors and others at Pitt could do for him.

His search for relief ultimately led him to Dr. Joon Lee of Pitt’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and UPMC.

After several surgeries to address spinal stenosis and scoliosis, Bethel has his mobility, even playing golf, he told TribLive in October.

“It might seem like an exaggeration, but I felt that he really saved my life,” Bethel said at the time.

Dr. Lee didn’t realize back then that Bethel was CEO of Gettysburg-based Hillandale Farms, a national egg supplier. Hillandale maintains a corporate office in Hempfield, a distribution center in Plum and operations across Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut.

Talking with reporters on the day the new gift was announced, Dr. Lee explained how the biobank will work with those who give their permission to participate.

“Our idea is to collect surgical specimens from patients who are undergoing MSK or orthopedic-related surgeries,” he said. “These are the tissues that would normally be discarded.”

“The biobank will give researchers in the BMRC — and across the globe — access to important materials to accelerate discovery of biomarkers and therapeutic targets, enhancing our understanding of musculoskeletal disease and improving patient outcomes through personalized medicine,” said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and dean of Pitt’s School of Medicine. “The material collected for the repository will place the center on the forefront of global discovery.”

Working with the existing University of Pittsburgh Biospecimen Core, the biobank will create modern storage, processing and access systems for long-term specimen storage.

The initial gift already has helped with efforts including hiring personnel and consolidating lab space in a temporary location as the center’s permanent space undergoes renovations.

The two most recent gifts and an earlier $2 million gift toward an endowed chair brings the family’s total giving to $45.5 million.

Bethel said his support for the center and its future flows from what he already has received from those who treated him. He is, in effect, paying it forward to future patients.

“It gave me an inspiration of wanting to really do something that could make a difference,” he said.