The Multiple Myeloma Revolution Happening Right Now: Swarup Kumar, MD

What if a cancer diagnosis that once meant months to live now came with a realistic shot at a cure? This shift, once unthinkable in the world of blood cancers, is exactly what’s happening right now in multiple myeloma. Swarup Kumar, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, UCONN Health, and a hematologist-oncologist working at the cutting edge of multiple myeloma treatment. His work sits at the intersection of clinical care and emerging immunotherapy, a space that is moving faster than almost anywhere else in oncology today, as he explains in this interview.

Not long ago, a myeloma diagnosis carried a prognosis measured in months. Today, patients are living 15 years and beyond. This transformation was no accident. It happened because of a sustained, collaborative push—researchers, clinicians, industry partners, and patient advocates—all pulling in the same direction. Kumar has been part of that effort during one of its most consequential chapters: the arrival of bispecific antibodies and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy out of the lab and into real patient care. Among these therapies early adopters, at his institution, he navigated uncharted territory before many centers had even begun to think about these treatments. That early experience gave him a front-row seat to both the promise and the complexity of these powerful new tools, as well as the hard-won lessons that come with pioneering any new therapy in a clinical setting.

“We’re trying to move away even from calling it a chronic disease to a potentially curable disease with the newer treatments we have, so that’s always exciting for the clinicians who are dealing with myeloma patients,” he told The American Journal of Managed Care^®, “because we can impact the patients’ lives in such a way.”

The cure fraction in myeloma, once sitting below 10%, has now climbed to between 30% and 40% with newer regimens, he explains, and this number is only going to keep rising. In this interview, Kumar also digs into what real-world outcomes with bispecific antibodies actually look like compared with trial data, and why that gap matters. He also addresses infection prevention, specifically the critical and often underappreciated role of intravenous immunoglobulin in protecting patients on these therapies.