Kirk Kerkorian
School of Medicine Student Making a Difference By Paul Harasim
B Bobak Seddighzadeh Future Greatest Medical Mind
obak Seddighzadeh, set to graduate from the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV in 2022, already holds an impressive CV. Even before he began medical school, he was a research associate for the renowned Harvard/
MGHY Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Disparities as well as project director for the recently opened Jamaica Cancer Care and Research Institute in the Caribbean. In addition to managing his medical school studies, he’s a dynamic researcher --
his work has appeared in peer reviewed journals, including BioMedicine and European Urology, as well as mainstream media, stretching from Men’s Health magazine to the Las Vegas Sun newspaper. Seddighzadeh also took time during medical school to pursue additional training in cancer genomics in Dr. Franklin Huang’s lab at the University of California San Francisco. “I have been called upon to become a physician-scientist because currently we need better answers for many of our patients.” During the height of the pandemic, researchers in Dr. Huang’s lab focused on COVID-19. “A trend emerged that men and women contracted COVID at similar rates, yet men were dying at greater proportions,” says Seddigzadeh. “We investigated sets of human lungs to see whether or not there were sex differences between men and women lung cells that would explain this phenomenon... We discovered that men had a greater percentage of lung cells that expressed the receptors that COVID-19 requires to infiltrate our cells.” “I want to live a life of purpose,” says Seddighzadeh, who received a full tuition scholarship to Kerkorian School of Medicine in 2017 courtesy of Dr. Barbara Atkinson, founding dean, and Maureen Schafer, the medical school’s former chief of staff.” For me that means making time to pursue meaningful projects that have great potential to help others through medicine.” A biology and biochemistry honors graduate of Loyola Marymount University, Seddighzadeh attended New York University for graduate school. There, he received a job offer from the celebrated Harvard researcher, Dr. Alexandra E. Shields who asked him to help open a cancer institute in the Caribbean. While at Harvard, Seddighzadeh also helped investigate how psychosocial stress can influence chronic disease. Seddighzadeh lost his father to pancreatic cancer during his research year with Dr. Huang. That loss has him thinking of helping UNLV establish a world-class cancer research institute. “My father and mother were the yin and yang of my development. My father was a serial entrepreneur... From him, I learned...discipline and persistence. He instilled in me a growth mindset - that I can accomplish anything that I choose as long as I keep learning, work hard and persist through setbacks…. My mother was a clinical psychologist. She gave me values of ethics, simplicity, caring and doing right by others, and to be generous. She instilled in me emotional intelligence and awareness. I think it’s the unique combination of their skills that have given me a foundation to hopefully make strides as a great doctor for my patients and as a leader for my community.”
