Luciano J. Costa is Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and holds the Mary and Bill Battle Professorship in Multiple Myeloma. He serves as Director of the Multiple Myeloma Program and the Immune Effector Cellular Therapy Program at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Costa obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, then completed his hematology and medical oncology training at the University of Colorado in Aurora and his blood and marrow transplantation fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Dr. Costa joined UAB in 2014 as a Senior Clinical Investigator after serving as Associate Professor of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he co-chaired the Protocol Review Committee at Hollings Cancer Center. Since his arrival at UAB, multiple myeloma clinical trial enrollment has increased dramatically, from zero patients in 2013 to 85 patients in 2019. He created a multiple myeloma clinical trials consortium and currently serves as principal investigator on multiple industry-sponsored research projects and federal grants.

Dr. Costa is known for his innovative MASTER trial, which achieved unprecedented response rates in multiple myeloma by using minimal residual disease-guided therapy with the goal of finite treatment rather than lifelong maintenance. The trial notably enrolled 21% African American participants, one of the highest rates in multiple myeloma research. His research focuses on cellular therapies, immunotherapy, and developing new therapeutic strategies for plasma cell malignancies. He has been cited over 17,000 times in academic literature and is an advocate for the possibility of curing multiple myeloma.