Brain cancer and the Islamic Republic of Iran came up in the same breath during a recent conversation about clinical trials, Israel’s medical ecosystem, and the future of the Middle East. The man making that comparison says he is fighting both at once.
Amir Heshmatpour, an Iran-born American businessman who leads a Nasdaq-listed brain cancer biotech company, told The Jerusalem Post that his team is preparing to begin treating patients in Israel within weeks, while he works in parallel to help bring down Iran’s clerical regime.
“I’m the chairman and CEO of a brain cancer company that’s on NASDAQ," Heshmatpour said, after describing what he called a near-term plan for Israel. He framed the political track just as such. “My other focus is I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure the mullahs (Shi’ite clerics) get overthrown.”
He was born in Iran’s northwest and left as a child. “I was born in the northwest of Iran, in Tabriz, and I left Iran when I was six or seven years old,” he said. “I’ve never been back to Iran.”
He described his father as a successful businessman who owned movie theaters and hotels in Tabriz. After the family began moving to the US, Heshmatpour said, his father returned to Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution (the uprising that brought clerical rule) to deal with the businesses, despite warnings.
“He didn’t listen to everybody’s advice to not go back,” Heshmatpour said. “And they came and arrested him. The mullahs came in and arrested him, and he spent a couple of years in prison, tortured him, froze all his assets, and took away the assets.”
The family arrived in the US as Muslims and later changed faiths to Christianity. Heshmatpour enrolled at Penn State, started working while still a student, and then dropped out after his father died. “My dad passed away when he was 47,” he said. “I’m the only son in our Persian family. I have four sisters. So I had to fit into my dad’s shoes and take care of the family, so I dropped out of college.”
He moved west, later settling in Los Angeles, and described a business path from restaurants to telecommunications and then private equity. “I went into the telecommunication business,” he said, adding that he took a company public through a reverse merger and later sold it.
Heshmatpour said his ties to Jewish life run through both family and business. “My dad’s sister was married to a Jew,” he said, calling it “a rarity back then.” He said that before the revolution, “everything with Israel was really positive… during Shaw’s days,” referring to the Shah (Iran’s monarch before 1979). In the US, he described a career built alongside Jewish partners and investors. “My first business partner in college was Jewish,” he said. “I’ve always had pretty much Jewish partners, Jewish investors, and Jewish friends.” He added, "My wife is Jewish.”
A trial in Israel, and the questions that come with it
Heshmatpour said he chose biotech for impact and framed brain cancer as personal. “My wife’s brother died of brain cancer. He was six years old,” he said. “I usually don’t run these myself. I am running this one myself.”
He said he acquired a brain-cancer platform from USC’s Keck School of Medicine and emphasized a large patent portfolio. “It was the largest brain cancer platform out of USC with 179 patents worldwide,” he said.
His key scientific claim centers on delivery. Brain cancer drugs often struggle to reach the brain because of the blood-brain barrier (the brain’s protective filter). “We’re the first company to deliver the drug via inner nasal delivery,” he said. “You inhale the drug, and it bypasses the blood-brain barrier.”
He also described an oral approach combining a common chemotherapy drug with what he called “our Neo 100.” “We’ve taken… temozolomide TMZ, and bioconjugated it with our Neo 100 in an oral form,” he said. “That’s like TMZ on steroids, it’s 10 times more effective with 97.5% less toxicity.” He called TMZ “a very, very toxic drug,” adding, “It destroys your bone marrow.”
Heshmatpour said his company is running multiple Phase II trials (mid-stage studies that test safety and early effectiveness) and is expanding from US sites into the Middle East. He said the company filed paperwork to begin work in Israel. “We filed an IND in Israel,” he said, using the US term for an Investigational New Drug application.
He then described a near-term Israeli patient starting under “compassionate use” (a pathway that can allow a severely ill patient access to an experimental drug outside a formal trial under strict oversight). “We are going to enroll our first patient in Israel, I think, in the next couple of weeks,” he said, describing a 45-year-old woman whose standard-of-care treatment failed. He said the case would begin “at the University of Tel Aviv hospital with MD Dvora Blumenthal,” as he put it.
He said the regimen aims to preserve quality of life. “You take it four times a day,” he said. “It takes about 20 minutes per session, and you could do it from the comfort of your home.”
Biotech claims frequently fluctuate based on later-stage evidence, and brain cancer has a reputation for yielding disappointing results despite initial promise. Heshmatpour acknowledged that his studies are not placebo-controlled. “This is not a double-blind test,” he said. “We can’t be saying, 'Okay, you take the drug, you take the sugar.'" He argued that many patients entering these studies have exhausted standard options. He described the stakes in human terms. “If you could extend a patient’s life for 60 days,” he said, “you have God’s fingers in that drug.” He claimed longer benefits for some, adding, “We’re extending lives for 18 months.”
Heshmatpour linked his Israel push partly to Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, a prominent rabbi with a large following. He said he met Pinto in New York through a Persian-Jewish friend and felt welcomed as a non-Jew. “Some rabbis have said, 'Well, he's not Jewish,'” he said. “One thing I really liked about Rabbi Pinto was that he was with open arms."
As the interview closed, Heshmatpour returned to the “two cancers” framing, medicine and politics. In a statement he shared after the interview, he said he hopes “President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will bring this conflict to a decisive and just conclusion" and that “the tyrannical regime in Tehran will soon be replaced.” He added, “I am committed to serving as a bridge between the Iranian and Israeli peoples, fostering dialogue, economic cooperation, and mutual respect, and transforming shared challenges into lasting progress for generations to come.”