Building Relations and Enhanced Relationality as the Backbone of Methodologies in the Digital and Public Humanities

The very act of building relations or putting things into relationship – be they technology and culture, scholars and audiences, data and materials – thus form the backbone of scholarly projects that came to define this research field. The authors chosen for this first issue interpret the topic of “Relations” at different levels, from the scholarly practice of creating internal and external references across a digital research project (Stonayova, Pizzirusso), to the necessity of connecting digital resources and audiences from different domains (Venuti et al.), to the more theoretical reflection on relations between resources and users in the web (Scanagatta, Charlesworth et al.). What emerges from all papers is the on-going effort to build platforms and resources that aim to become collaborative workspaces for sharing research results and the essential precondition of building digital communities of scholars and practitioners to achieve this goal

A New Venture and a Commitment to Disciplinary Fusion in the Domain of Digital and Public Humanities

On 5 June 2019, Ca’ Foscari University launched the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH) in order to take a proactive role in the digital transformation of society and of the academic landscape. With the ambition of enhancing humanities research and opening up knowledge and practices to a wider public, scholars, artists and programmers have been attracted who are engaged in the application of computer science and emerging technologies in the humanities. Building on the competences and achievements already made at the Department of Humanities, which has been awarded with an excellence grant by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR), a new team of expert scholars and specialists

Punctual and kinetic MRD analysis from the Fondazione Italiana Linfomi MCL0208 phase III trial in mantle cell lymphoma

Minimal residual disease (MRD) analysis is a known predictive tool in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). We describe MRD results from the Fondazione Italiana Linfomi phase III MCL0208 prospective clinical trial assessing lenalidomide maintenance vs observation after autologous transplantation (ASCT), in the first prospective comprehensive analysis of different techniques, molecular markers, and tissues (peripheral blood, PB, and bone marrow, BM), taken at well-defined timepoints. Among the 300 patients enrolled, a molecular marker was identified in 250 (83%), allowing us to analyze 234 patients and 4351 analytical findings from 10 timepoints. ASCT induced high rates of molecular remission (91% in PB and 83% in BM, by quantitative real-time PCR [RQ-PCR]). Nevertheless, the number of patients with persistent clinical and molecular remission decreased over time in both arms (up to 30% after 36 months). MRD predicted early progression and long-term outcome, particularly from 6 months after ASCT (6-month TTP HR 3.83, p<0.001). In single-timepoint analysis, BM outperformed PB, and RQ-PCR was more reliable, while nested PCR appeared applicable to a larger number of patients (234 vs 176). To improve MRD performance we developed a time-varying kinetic model, based on regularly updated MRD results and the Mantle Cell Lymphoma International Prognostic Index, showing an area under the ROC curve (AUROC) of up to 0.87 using BM. Most notably, PB reached an AUROC of up to 0.81: with kinetic analysis it was comparable to BM in performance. MRD is a powerful predictor over the entire natural history of MCL and suitable for models with continuous adaptation of patient risk. Study can be found in EudraCT N. 2009-012807-25 https://eudract.ema.europa.eu/

Fusions

FUSION