A professional headshot of Kelly Yoo, smiling outdoors with long straight black hair, wearing a light blue blouse. The background features a sunny green lawn and a building, creating a fresh and vibrant atmosphere.

Kelly (Hyeon Joon) Yoo

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholar
Department of Neurosurgery
MD, Medicine, Ruprecht Karls University, 2019
PhD, Medicine, CAR-T Cell Immunotherapy, Ruprecht Karls University, 2021
Affiliation:
Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholars
Stanford Profile

Kelly Yoo is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, working jointly in the laboratories of Professor Michael Lim (Department of Neurosurgery) and Professor Michael Lin (Departments of Neurobiology and Bioengineering). Kelly earned her M.D. and Ph.D. from Heidelberg University School of Medicine, where she focused on CAR T cell immunotherapy. As a clinician-scientist, Kelly specializes in developing innovative therapeutic strategies for neurosurgical pathologies. Her current research explores harnessing hyperactive ErbB signaling to activate therapeutic agents within tumor cells, utilizing an engineered vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) that expresses the Rewiring Aberrant Signaling to Effector Release (RASER) system. Through this work, Kelly aims to evaluate the translational potential of the RASER system in brain cancer treatment and its future clinical application as an adjunctive modality in neurosurgery.

Related Projects

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neurosciences Interdisciplinary Scholar Awards
2025
Programmed Viruses for Brain Cancer

Despite advancements in cancer treatment, the prognosis for brain cancer patients remains poor. Glioblastoma
multiforme, the most aggressive type of brain tumor, is driven by genetic mutations and overexpression of
growth-promoting receptors. While recent innovations in targeted therapies and immunotherapies aim to inhibit