Hamid Javanshir witnessed the negative effects of cancer on the lives of his friends and family. Javanshir, a student in the Computational Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CoBB) master’s degree program, lost his grandmother to lymphoma. This experience sparked his desire to explore cancer research that could improve patients’ lives.
“I promised myself I would someday find a therapeutic pathway for different types of cancers, and right now I am focused on finding one for pancreatic cancer,” he said.
Pursuing a passion for research
Growing up in a family of physicians gave Javanshir an early appreciation for scientific research and medicine. They encouraged him to pursue research and create better treatments for serious diseases. From a young age, he was fascinated by drug discovery and the process of developing new therapies. That lifelong interest led him to the intersection of computer science and drug discovery, where computational approaches can help identify and design new therapeutic candidates more efficiently.
As an undergraduate student at Azad University in Tehran, Iran, Javanshir and his principal investigator published a paper on biomarkers for the early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He was inspired to continue researching pancreatic cancer in graduate school. In 2025, an article in Cell Death Discovery about a protein that could selectively kill cancer cells caught his attention.
He began thinking about how he could turn this discovery into a therapy for pancreatic cancer. The bacterial protein itself can’t be used as a drug because it’s foreign to the body and too large to penetrate tumors. Instead, he wanted to design a small synthetic molecule that could reproduce its cancer-killing effect.
Using techniques he learned from his Modern Methods in Structure-Based Drug Discovery class, Javanshir designed and screened drug candidate compounds on the computer. He searched for one whose shape and chemistry would engage the same cancer-cell receptors as the bacterial protein and trigger the same apoptosis signal to self-destruct. Then, he used molecular modeling to test his results.
He hopes this computational strategy will identify small-molecule candidates that could one day be developed to slow down the progression of pancreatic cancer. Javanshir is now working on a provisional patent application for the novel drug candidates he designed through his original computational strategy. “This society needs the support of science, and I’m going to do my best to serve them as a young researcher,” he said.
Another important part of Javanshir’s journey was his opportunity to work as a laboratory research technician at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Working at Children’s Hospital allowed him to contribute to projects focused on pancreatic diseases, including pancreatic cancer and diabetes, while gaining hands-on experience that complemented his computational research.
Planning for future discoveries
Javanshir, who will graduate from the CoBB program in August, is looking forward to pursuing this research more in the future. “I hope to continue my academic journey through a PhD and dedicate my career to developing computational approaches that accelerate drug discovery and improve treatments for complex diseases,” he said.
He is currently considering PhD programs in pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology, integrative systems biology or oncology. Outside of academia, he also has an interest in building a startup company to translate computational research into real-world biomedical solutions.
As he prepares for graduation, Javanshir leaves current CoBB students with some advice on how to make the most of their time at Pitt: “If you think that something is not possible or it is very hard to do, just go and do it. If you don’t, you won’t find the answer that you’re looking for, and the question will remain with you for years.”