Use of a real-world synthetic control arm for direct comparison of lisocabtagene maraleucel and conventional therapy in relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma.

This study used a real-world population as a synthetic comparator for the single-arm TRANSCEND NHL 001 study (TRANSCEND; NCT02631044) to evaluate the efficacy of lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel) compared with conventional (noncellular) therapies in patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). Inclusion and exclusion criteria for the real-world study closely matched the enrollment criteria in TRANSCEND. The analytic comparator cohort was created by matching and balancing observed baseline characteristics of real-world patients with those in TRANSCEND using propensity score methodology. Efficacy outcomes comparing liso-cel- (n = 257) and conventional therapy-treated (n = 257) patients, respectively, significantly favored liso-cel: overall response rate (74% vs 39%; p < 0.0001), complete response rate (50% vs 24%; p < 0.0001), median overall survival (23.5 vs 6.8 months; p < 0.0001), and median progression-free survival (3.5 vs 2.2 months; p < 0.0001). These results demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful benefit of liso-cel in patients with third- or later-line R/R LBCL relative to conventional therapies.Clinical trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02631044.

Representation of Spatial Variability of the Water Fluxes over the Congo Basin Region.

The Congo Basin, being one of the major basins in the tropics, is important to the global climate, yet its hydrology is perhaps the least understood. Although various reanalysis/analysis datasets have been used to improve our understanding of the basin's hydroclimate, they have been historically difficult to validate due to sparse in situ measurements. This study analyzes the impact of model resolution on the spatial variability of the Basin's hydroclimate using the Decorrelation Length Scale (DLCS) technique, as it is not subject to uniform model bias. The spatial variability within the precipitation (P), evaporation/evapotranspiration (E), and precipitation-minus-evaporation (P-E) fields were investigated across four spatial resolutions using reanalysis/analysis datasets from the ECMWF ranging from 9-75 km. Results show that the representation of P and P-E fields over the Basin and the equatorial Atlantic Ocean are sensitive to model resolution, as the spatial patterns of their DCLS results are resolution-dependent. However, the resolution-independent features are predominantly found in the E field. Furthermore, the P field is the dominant source of spatial variability of P-E, occurring over the land and the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, while over the Southern Atlantic, P-E is mainly governed by the E field, with both showing weak spatial variability.