Bringing Cutting-Edge MM Therapy to Every Patient: Swarup Kumar, MD

Bringing one of oncology’s most promising new therapies—bispecific antibodies—to the patients who need it most is a daily challenge clinicians face on the front lines of multiple myeloma care delivery.

Swarup Kumar, MD, is assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at UConn Health, and a leader for UConn Health’s multiple myeloma (MM) and plasma cell disorders program. His work sits at the space between what cutting-edge science can do and what community-based practices can realistically deliver.

Right now, that intersection is being defined by bispecific antibodies, a class of immunotherapy that has transformed outcomes for patients living with relapsed/refractory MM and is already expanding into other cancers, including small cell lung cancer. As Kumar knows firsthand, a therapy’s approval is only the beginning of the story. The adverse effect profile, the monitoring requirements, the step-up dosing phases—all of it can feel daunting to community oncologists managing patients with multiple comorbidities and limited hospital infrastructure.

His team has been building a model to close that gap: identifying high-risk patients for bispecific therapy early, looping in social work and supportive care teams from the start, leveraging the institution’s charity care model, and exploring outpatient administration protocols. He’s also been working with the International Myeloma Foundation to extend resources further into the community. In one of the more counterintuitive insights he shares, some patients actually prefer the inpatient step-up because it’s less disruptive than repeated outpatient monitoring visits.

In this conversation, he discusses sequencing bispecific antibodies for the right patients at the right moment, what it really takes to build the academic-community partnerships that make safer administration possible, and how the field needs to evolve in education, advocacy, and protocol design as these therapies move beyond myeloma and into broader oncology practice.

As Kumar puts it, “It’s only imperative that as the field is moving in that direction, everybody is prepared to handle the adverse events.”