Shaji Kumar, M.D. (I ’99, HEMO ’03), receives an award, Mayo Clinic Rochester

Shaji Kumar, M.D. (I ’99, HEMO ’03), Division of Hematology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, received an Interventional-Treatment Clinical Trial Award from the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, in partnership with Mayo Clinic Research, for the project “PRAGMMATIC: A Pragmatic Comparative Clinical Trial to Determine the BEST Initial Therapy for Multiple Myeloma.” He shares the award with Vincent Rajkumar, M.D. (HEMO ’99). The award supports cancer trials designed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention in real-life clinical practice conditions and encourages the participation of people from underrepresented minority groups. Supported trials will use telemedicine and mobile and local health care professionals to reduce the need for participants to travel to meet with researchers. Dr. Kumar is the Mark and Judy Mullins Professor of Hematologic Malignancies, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.