Yousef Zakharia, M.D. is a medical oncologist with clinical expertise in genitourinary malignancies and early-phase experimental therapeutics. He joined Mayo Clinic AZ in September 2024. Currently serves as the Interim-Chair of the Genitourinary Malignancy Disease Group at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also the Medical Director of the Experimental Therapeutics Clinic at Mayo Clinic AZ. Prior to joining Mayo Clinic, Dr. Zakharia was on the faculty at the University of Iowa for the last 10 years and became a professor of medicine in 2024. He served as the Phase 1 Program Director at the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Zakharia has been principal investigator on more than 50 clinical trials, including investigator-initiated trials (IITs), industry-sponsored studies, and cooperative group studies. His clinical and translational research has been published in reputable journals, including but not limited to NEJM, JCO, Nature Communications, Cancer Discovery, JITC, and CCR. He has presented his work at multiple national and international meetings, including a plenary session at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in 2017. One of his main research projects has been an investigator-initiated clinical trial combining axitinib with high-dose selenium (4000 mcg as tumor microenvironment modulator) in metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma in refractory settings. This trial completed accrual and suggested that the combination is safe with promising clinical activity, leading to another ongoing first-line clinical trial of this combination with pembrolizumab in metastatic kidney cancer. One of his goals at Mayo Clinic is to work closely with the team to bring innovative clinical trials to our patients and to mentor fellows and junior faculty interested in clinical research.