From left: BMRC leaders Gwendolyn Sowa, Joon Lee and Nam Vo
Less than a year after the Bethel Musculoskeletal Research Center (BMRC) was created through a $25 million gift from the Orland Bethel Family Foundation, the center is celebrating significant progress.
The center announced its inaugural class of fellows, a key aspect of its mission of elevating the study of musculoskeletal disorders. This summer, it hosted five students in its Student Summer Research Program. And it has also started work on its future home and moved into temporary lab space in the Riviera Building, bringing its core labs together in one place.
“We've accomplished so much since we launched,” said Joon Y. Lee, the center’s executive director.
Lee, who is the Orland Bethel Professor of Spine Surgery, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and clinical director, Ferguson Laboratory for Orthopaedic and Spine Research, said a major goal of the endowment “was to establish cross-laboratory, cross-specialty collaboration.”
All the principal investigators, or PIs, from the center’s 11 core labs are easily able to meet in the new space, he said. “The communication is already better, for sure.”
The core labs are the Ferguson Laboratory for Orthopaedic and Spine Research, the Joint Tissue Biology and Engineering Laboratory, the Musculoskeletal Regenerative Rehabilitation Laboratory, the Musculoskeletal Oncology Laboratory, the Joint Tissue Development and Engineering Lab, the Pittsburgh Shoulder Institute, the Pittsburgh Orthopaedic Spine Research Group, the Surgery of the Upper Extremity Research (SUPER) Group, the Foot and Ankle Injury Research Group, the Biodynamics Lab, and the MechanoBiology Laboratory.
The PIs have met with the design team and architects to design their future home to meet their needs, he said. While the new space, on the 16th floor of Biomedical Science Tower 2, is renovated, the center is settling in to its temporary home.
“It's right next to the river,” Lee added. “Great views, a great venue for us to spend a couple of years.”
Over the summer, the members of the inaugural class of BMRC’s Student Summer Research Program were Michael Bardos, Joseph Garzia, Anneka Gernert and Marissa Mansour, all from Pitt, and Lorin Planinsic of the University of Miami.
The program provides hands-on laboratory experience with mentorship to undergraduate and medical students. The participants spent nine weeks in BMRC labs, getting training in research methods, and presented their findings at the end-of-program symposium in August.
Read about their research here.
Now, BMRC is welcoming the inaugural cohort of Bethel Fellows, who came together on an unusually tight timeline, Lee said.
“We officially launched in January. We made the announcement for the applications for the fellows in February, and the initial applications were due in April.”
They collaborated with the Orthopedic Research Society (ORS), which just celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding. ORS, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization focused on orthopaedics and musculoskeletal care, boasts 3,200 members worldwide, including engineers, biologists, clinicians and students.
“We cobranded our fellowship with them to announce it at their meetings, and they've helped us to reach into their society base to recruit for this special fellowship. And it turned out fantastic,” Lee said.
The program drew 100 applicants from all over the country. “We want to try to encourage cross-campus collaboration from different institutions, so we looked to achieve a couple of things,” Lee said. “One is obviously to promote our institution, Pitt School of Medicine, and the Department of Orthopaedics in general to other people around the country to let them know about some great things that we're doing here.”
The other, he said, supports the BMRC’s core intent “to broadly encourage young, innovative scientists who are just starting out in their training or starting out in their research careers.”
“We are excited for our first class of BMRC fellows,” said MaCalus V. Hogan, David Silver Professor and chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. “This is a huge step forward in the legacy of orthopaedic and musculoskeletal research for BMRC and our department.”
Following are the inaugural fellows.
Postdoc/Resident ($20,000 each)
Varun Arvid, MD, PhD – orthopaedic surgery resident, Columbia University – Targeting Myotendinous Elongation for the Treatment of Neuromuscular Contracture
Kevin Burt, PhD – postdoctoral fellow, University of Pennsylvania – Immune Cell Phenotyping During Spine Destabilization
Rebecca Irwin, PhD – postdoctoral fellow, Cornell University – Intravital Multi-Photon Imaging of the Meniscus to Reveal Systemic Factors in Injury and Repair
Junior Faculty ($30,000 each)
Alice Goodwin, DDS, PhD – assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh – SIX6; a new candidate gene in the etiopathogenesis of Pierre Robin sequence
Natalia Harasymowicz, PhD – assistant professor, University of Utah – Elucidation of the role of T cells in obesity-induced osteoarthritis