Yousef Zakharia, M.D.

Yousef Zakharia, M.D., is a medical oncologist with expertise in genitourinary malignancies and early-phase experimental therapeutics. He joined Mayo Clinic in Arizona in September 2024. He currently serves as Chair of the Genitourinary Malignancy Disease Group within the Mayo Clinic Enterprise Comprehensive Cancer Center and as Medical Director of the Section of Experimental Therapeutics at Mayo Clinic Arizona.

Prior to joining Mayo Clinic, Dr. Zakharia was on the faculty at the University of Iowa for a decade, achieving the rank of Professor of Medicine in 2024. He served as Phase 1 Program Director at the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Zakharia has been the principal investigator on more than 50 clinical trials, including investigator-initiated, industry-sponsored, and cooperative group studies. His clinical and translational research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Communications, Cancer Discovery, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, and Clinical Cancer Research. He has presented his work at numerous national and international meetings, including a plenary session at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in 2017.

At Mayo Clinic, Dr. Zakharia aims to collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams to expand access to innovative clinical trials and to mentor fellows and junior faculty pursuing careers in clinical and translational research.