The International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) shared news of the passing of Robert A. Kyle, MD, at age 98 on September 2, 2026. Dr. Kyle was a highly revered expert in the field of myeloma research and known to many as the “Father of Myeloma” for his groundbreaking work in hematology. Dr. Kyle was Chairman of the first IMF Scientific Advisory Board and was also a long-time member of the IMF Board of Directors.
Dr. Kyle was Professor of Medicine, Laboratory Medicine, and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, where he also served as Section Head prior to becoming Chairman of the Division of Hematology.
Small-Town Midwestern Roots
Robert A. Kyle was born on March 17, 1928, in Bottineau, North Dakota, a small town situated about 15 miles south of the Canadian border. In an interview with Dr. Kyle in 2019, The ASCO Post learned about Dr. Kyle’s extraordinary life and career. Excerpts of this interview are shared here.
“I went to a one-room country school. There were 15 to 20 children in the single room and 1 teacher,” said Dr. Kyle, adding, “Neither of my parents had much formal education, which they viewed as a liability. They didn’t want my four brothers and me to suffer, so they strongly advised us to pursue higher education.”
After high school, he entered the North Dakota School of Forestry in Bottineau, which was a 2-year junior college. Dr. Kyle recalled that a family friend suggested he become a doctor. As he loved science, he kept the thought in the back of his mind.
“One day when I was in the School of Forestry, my brother, who I was living with at the time, became very ill. He was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. His doctor impressed me, and that experience further increased my interest in medicine,” said Dr. Kyle. After completing 2 years at the School of Forestry, Dr. Kyle entered the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks as a junior to complete his undergraduate degree.
Two Life-Changing Events
Dr. Kyle attended Northwestern University Medical School and graduated with distinction in June 1952. He then performed a rotating internship at Evanston Hospital in Illinois, a major teaching hospital affiliated with Northwestern.
“A couple of very impressive members of the faculty had trained at the Mayo Clinic [in Rochester], so I applied there and was accepted,” said Dr. Kyle. “The program required 6 months of laboratory work. One of the options was hematology, something I knew little about, so I signed up. My project involved acquired hemolytic anemia in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and lymphoma. I passed the written exam for my Master’s of Science in Medicine and then wrote a thesis.”
He continued, “Two things happened subsequently on the hematology hospital service that altered my future scientific life. First, I saw an electrophoretic pattern which I had never seen before and asked the consultant on the service what that meant. He didn’t know other than that a spike was often seen in multiple myeloma and Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia and suggested that I ‘look into it.’ Serum protein electrophoresis was a new test in clinical laboratories, but over 6,000 electrophoretic patterns had been performed at the Mayo Clinic. I looked at all of them and devised a formula based on height vs width of the spike. I discovered that if the height was greater than 4 to 1 over the width at the midpoint of the peak, patients usually had myeloma or macroglobulinemia; in contrast, if the ratio was lower than that, patients most likely had a chronic infection or an inflammatory process. So I wrote the paper, which was published in JAMA.”1
The other influential event came when a patient was admitted to the hematology service with a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. “A consulting dermatologist had performed a skin biopsy that disclosed amyloid. It struck me that some of the patients I had seen with smaller spikes on the electrophoretic patterns had systemic amyloidosis. I reviewed all 81 cases of primary amyloidosis seen at the Mayo Clinic from 1935 to 1959, and published a paper.2 I made the point that all these patients had abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow and that some of them had frank multiple myeloma. Those two events changed my scientific career.”
More Training in Boston
Seeking more training in hematology, Dr. Kyle traveled to Tufts University in Boston for a fellowship under William Dameshek, MD, one of the leading clinical hematologists in the nation. “After a few months, Dr. Dameshek invited me to work occasional afternoons in his private office. I saw patients and learned to write a letter to the referring physician that same day. It was a good habit to develop. Unfortunately, I learned that there were more patient records in Dr. Dameshek’s ‘Deceased’ filing cabinet than in the ‘Living’ filing cabinet. That reflects what happened to most hematology patients at that time,” said Dr. Kyle.
Dr. Kyle recalled a memorable event during his fellowship at Tufts. “Dr. Dameshek sent a couple of fellows to the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, New York to learn bone marrow transplantation from E. Donnall Thomas, MD. When I returned to the Mayo Clinic, I saw a 7-year-old girl with severe aplastic anemia. She had an identical twin sister who, of course, was the perfect donor for a transplant. We performed the transplant, and the recipient lived.”
After spending 2 years at Tufts University, Dr. Kyle was offered a position at the Mayo Clinic. He returned to Minnesota in August 1961 and remained at the Mayo Clinic throughout his decades-long career.
Asked to describe a salient remembrance from the arc of his career, Dr. Kyle shared: “During the last 40 years of the 20th century, only two notable things happened in the treatment of multiple myeloma: the introduction of melphalan and bone marrow transplantation. Then, in the 1990s, a patient came to me with multiple myeloma. I advised a combination of alkylating agents; he responded, relapsed, and ultimately became refractory to all available therapy.”
Dr. Kyle remembered, “His wife was an incredible advocate who searched the literature for answers. She learned of an antiangiogenic drug called endostatin, which Judah Folkman, MD, was then studying at Harvard. Dr. Folkman told her that endostatin was only in early-stage research, but another antiangiogenic drug, thalidomide, was available at the National Cancer Institute under the compassionate use program.”
Dr. Kyle continued, “The patient’s wife contacted Bart Barlogie, MD, who requested the drug and treated her husband. Unfortunately, the patient died a few months later of myeloma, but Dr. Barlogie then treated a refractory myeloma patient who responded. He went on to treat more than 80 cases of refractory myeloma with thalidomide and reported that about one-third of patients had significant responses. That was the beginning of the novel agents that are now markedly improving the outcomes of these patients with myeloma.” Dr. Barlogie is currently on faculty with the Tisch Cancer Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
Advice for the Next Generation
Dr. Kyle spoke about the challenges and rewards of medicine, and he remarked that “The most important advice I have for young physicians is that they choose a specialty they are intensely interested in. Passion makes hard work and long hours less onerous. Also, today’s oncologists are pressed to see so many patients that one runs the risk of losing sight of the patient sitting in the exam room. You must be certain to take the time and effort to get to know your patient with cancer on a personal level.”
Dr. Kyle told The ASCO Post that “It is a wonderful privilege to interact with our patients, and that’s something that needs to be emphasized more.”
Memoirs of a Remarkable Journey
After he stopped seeing patients, Dr. Kyle continued at Mayo Clinic as a supplemental consultant, which allowed him to continue to contribute to the fields of multiple myeloma, Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, and amyloidosis.
Among Dr. Kyle's many honors are the David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award from ASCO and the Wallace H. Coulter Award from the American Society of Hematology. They are the highest honors bestowed by these two groups, and he is one of only two persons to receive both awards; Kanti Rai, MD, was the second individual to receive both prestigious awards.
Dr. Kyle published over 1,050 articles relating to hematology and oncology, along with more than 1,350 abstracts and editorials.
Additionally, Dr. Kyle served as the first President of the International Society of Amyloidosis and the International Myeloma Society. He became a member of the Editorial Board of Leukemia, and an honorary member of the Royal Society of Pathologists in London.
Because of his innumerable achievements and milestones in the field of myeloma, the IMF established the Dr. Robert A. Kyle Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, with Dr. Kyle as its first recipient.
David Steensma, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Ajax Therapeutics worked with Dr. Kyle to produce his memoir, published in 2023.
Dr. Steensma wrote that “Dr. Kyle’s career has coincided with a golden age of progress in medicine, as molecular diagnostics and rationally engineered precision therapies supplemented insights obtained from careful clinical description, biochemical assays, and light microscopy. His professional life has also been unusually long. Well into his ninth decade, he continued to travel over 100,000 miles per year to attend scientific conferences and deliver invited lectures.
"He always was a welcome presence at these meetings, offering not only insights born of long experience and historical perspective but also a needed dose of Midwestern common sense. At age 94, he was still encouraging and inspiring younger physicians; he maintained an academic office in one of Mayo’s research buildings, and remained intellectually engaged in the plasma cell disorders research community.”
To learn more about Dr. Kyle, see his memoir, A Physician’s Journey: The Memoir of Robert A. Kyle, M.D. The Digital Press at The University of North Dakota, 2023.
REFERENCES
1. Kyle RA, Bayrd ED, McKenzie BF, et al: Diagnostic criteria for electrophoretic patterns of serum and urinary proteins in multiple myeloma: Study of one hundred and sixty five multiple myeloma patients and of seventy seven nonmyeloma patients with similar electrophoretic patterns. JAMA 174:245-251, 1960.
2. Kyle RA, Bayrd ED: Primary systemic amyloidosis and myeloma: Discussion of relationship and review of 81 cases. Arch Intern Med 107:344-353, 1961.
