John Yu, MD, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Kairos Pharma. Yu has spent his career at the intersection of neurosurgery, immunology and cancer research, and also serves as Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of Surgical Neuro-Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He earned his BAS from Stanford University and his MD from Harvard Medical School and MIT, completed his neurosurgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard, and pursued an immunology fellowship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. This combined training in surgery and immunology has shaped his view of cancer not simply as tumors to remove, but as complex biological systems that can be retrained through immune-based strategies.
Over the course of his career, Yu has developed eight FDA investigational drugs. He holds multiple patents in immunotherapies and nanotechnologies, most of which stem from his NIH-funded laboratory at Cedars-Sinai focused on harnessing the immune system to treat aggressive cancers. Prior to founding Kairos Pharma, he served as CEO and chairman of AcTcell and as director of Enviro Therapeutics, gaining extensive experience translating scientific discovery from the lab into clinical development.