Jianhua Yu, PhD, is a Professor and Founding Director of the Natural Killer (NK) Cell Research Program at City of Hope. Dr. Yu is internationally recognized for his fundamental contributions in understanding NK cell biology. Dr. Yu published pioneer studies on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cells as early as 2013. Dr. Yu’s team developed a process to engineer NK cells including those possessing a CAR for “off-the-shelf” clinical use. Dr. Yu also makes significant contributions to oncolytic virotherapy and conducts CAR-T cell research. Dr. Yu holds over 20 patents (awarded or pending) on his research that are highly applicable to the clinic, some of which are licensed to pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Yu has over 200 peer-reviewed publications with nearly 14,000 citations to date, notably senior-author ones on original studies in high-impact journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Nature Immunology, Cancer Discovery, Immunity, etc. Dr. Yu was a scholar of LLS and ACS and the recipient of the Jack Latham Innovative Research Award from the National Blood Foundation.