Khant Si Thu grew up in Yangon, Myanmar’s most populous city, where his parents ran a small business renting out trucks and cars.
By his own account, he wasn’t a top performer through elementary and middle school. But when he first learned about chemistry in high school, he fell in love with the subject. Determined to pursue science, he graduated from high school with distinctions in every subject.
He then enrolled in a seven-year Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program at the University of Medicine 1 in Yangon. There, he was drawn most to the basic science underneath clinical practice: physiology, pathology and pharmacology.
During a pediatric rotation, Khant encountered young boys with testicular and urogenital abnormalities — some already facing testicular cancer or untreatable leukemia.
“Why was this happening when they haven’t developed their reproductive systems yet?” he asks. While the focus was on treating the conditions, “I was always wondering about the reason, the mechanism behind those diseases.”
That question stayed with him.
But everything came to an abrupt stop in 2020. The pandemic halted all his clinical rotations, and soon after, political turmoil in Myanmar shut down the education system again amid regional conflicts.
He was six months away from graduating when he moved to Southern California to join the rest of his family.
“The first reason was obviously safety. It was more dangerous to live [in Myanmar],” he says. “I didn’t really have a plan about education initially.”
To continue pursuing his dream, however, Khant needed a total academic restart — a daunting move. On the advice of his parents and relatives, Khant enrolled at Pasadena City College and started taking general chemistry classes. To help pay his way and gain experience at the same time, he worked as a medical scribe in Monterey Park.
In 2024, he earned an associate degree in biology and applied to more than a dozen universities. USC was among his top choices from the start. What set USC Mann apart, he says, was the balance between clinical training and translational science.
On his first day of classes at USC, he met Martine Culty, professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences, who was explaining how environmental chemicals and common medications can disrupt hormone regulation in the developing testis. It was, almost word for word, the mechanism he had wondered about during his pediatric rotation half a world away.
“That was like hitting the jackpot,” he says. “I wanted to do research with her.”
Today, Khant is an undergraduate research assistant in the Culty lab. His honors thesis examines perinatal exposure to acetaminophen, and the plant phytoestrogen genistein affects Sertoli cell function in the developing testis.
“Khant is an exceptional student, motivated, with strong work ethics and a great personality,” Culty says. “He was excellent in my courses, and he is excelling in his research work in my lab.”
Last summer, Khant served as teaching assistant and undergraduate research fellow at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, co-leading a hands-on lab workshop for high school students and conducting research in the lab of Sanda Win, assistant professor of research medicine.
Khant has also been helping train the next generation of researchers through the USC Science, Technology and Research Program (in collaboration with Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School). He works with high school student Maggie Chen, who will join the USC Mann School as a first-year undergraduate student in the fall.
Adjusting to life in the U.S. has come with other challenges, Khant reflects. He describes himself as timid and nervous by nature. The pandemic’s disruption and having to learn a new language and a different culture made building community a challenge.
“Obviously, it wasn’t very easy to scratch everything and then start over. But I have a great support system,” Khant says. “At USC, the class size is very small, and I get close contact with the professors. Everyone has been supporting me very much.”
Much of the credit, he insists, belongs to his parents, who are still working to support him in their 60s and 70s. “I appreciate their hard work and their belief in me,” he says. “I just want to make sure I don’t disappoint them.”
As a progressive degree student, Khant will continue at USC Mann to pursue a master’s degree in clinical and experimental therapeutics. He is preparing for the next stage of his graduate training while exploring a combined PhD/PharmD or another research-focused route in translational oncology.
“Developing drugs to treat and cure patients has been my dream career for a long time,” Khant says. “I wanted to become a scientist and a healthcare provider, especially to pediatric populations.”