To the extent that stereotype and identity threat undermine academic performance, social psychological interventions that lessen threat could buffer threatened students and improve performance. Two studies, each featuring a longitudinal field experiment in a mixed-ethnicity middle school, examined whether a values affirmation writing exercise could attenuate the achievement gap between Latino American and European American students. In Study 1, students completed multiple self-affirmation (or control) activities as part of their regular class assignments. Latino American students, the identity threatened group, earned higher grades in the affirmation than control condition, whereas White students were unaffected. The effects persisted 3 years and, for many students, continued into high school by lifting their performance trajectory. Study 2 featured daily diaries to examine how the affirmation affected psychology under identity threat, with the expectation that it would shape students' narratives of their ongoing academic experience. By conferring a big-picture focus, affirmation was expected to broaden construals, prevent daily adversity from being experienced as identity threat, and insulate academic motivation from identity threat. Indeed, affirmed Latino American students not only earned higher grades than nonaffirmed Latino American students but also construed events at a more abstract than concrete level and were less likely to have their daily feelings of academic fit and motivation undermined by identity threat. Discussion centers on how social-psychological processes propagate themselves over time and how timely interventions targeting these processes can promote well-being and achievement.

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Background. Targeted therapies and checkpoint blockade therapy (CBT) have shown efficacy for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) in the relapsed and refractory (R/R) setting, but once discontinued owing to progression or side effects, it is unclear how successful further therapies will be. Moreover, there are no data on optimal sequencing of these treatments with standard therapies and other novel agents. In a multicenter, retrospective analysis, we investigated whether exposure to CBT could sensitize HL to subsequent therapy. Materials and Methods. Seventeen centers across the U.S. and Canada retrospectively queried medical records for eligible patients. The primary aim was to evaluate the overall response rate (ORR) to post-CBT treatment using the Lugano criteria. Secondary aims included progressionfree survival (PFS), duration of response, and overall survival (OS). Results. Eighty-one patients were included. Seventy-two percent had stage III-IV disease, and the population was heavily pretreated with a median of four therapies before CBT. Most patients (65%) discontinued CBT owing to progression. The ORR to post-CBT therapy was 62%, with a median PFS of 6.3 months and median OS of 21 months. Post-CBT treatment regimens consisted of chemotherapy (44%), targeted agents (19%), immunotherapy (15%), transplant conditioning (14%), chemotherapy/targeted combination (7%), and clinical trials (1%). No significant difference in OS was found when stratified by post-CBT regimen. Conclusion. In a heavily pretreated R/R HL population, CBT may sensitize patients to subsequent treatment, even after progression on CBT. Post-CBT regimen category did not impact OS. This may be a novel treatment strategy, which warrants further investigation in prospective clinical trials.

Primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL) is a subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). PMBCL comprises approximately 10% of DLBCLs, thus making it a rare variant of DLBCL. Cure rates for PMBCL with upfront regimens like DA-REPOCH exceed 90%. However, if there is a poor response to this first-line therapy, relapsed/refractory PMBCL (rrPMBCL) has limited treatment options. The historic trend is to treat rrPMBCL with salvage regimens commonly used for DLBCL followed by high-dose therapy and autologous stem cell transplant (HDT-ASCT); however, response rates to salvage therapy remain low and few patients are able to proceed to transplant. An interesting feature of PMBCL is that even though it is classified as a subtype of DLBCL, PMBCL actually shares many clinical, pathologic, and genetic features with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). For example, both frequently express program death ligand 1 and 2 (PD-L1/2), which is not seen in other mature B-cell lymphomas. The expression of PD-L1/2 in PMBCL makes PDL1 inhibitors, such as pembrolizumab, an attractive therapeutic target. Pembrolizumab is an effective and welltolerated therapy now approved for a number of cancer types from advanced melanoma to relapsed/refractory cHL. There are now multi-institutional trials underway assessing the role of pembrolizumab in the treatment of rrPMBCL.

Background: Relapsed or refractory (R/R) Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) remains a significant clinical problem. Recently checkpoint blockade therapy (CBT) has shown striking activity in this setting, but the complete response (CR) rate is modest. Patients who relapse after CBT have limited therapeutic options. A prior, retrospective study showed that after anti-PD-1 therapy the objective response rate to chemotherapy alone was 61% (Rossi et al 2017). We investigated the effect of treatment subsequent to CBT in a large international multicenter retrospective analysis. Methods: Seventeen centers across the US and Canada are participating in this study to date. Medical records of each institution were queried to identify HL patients who received CBT and were subsequently treated with an additional line of therapy. The primary aim of this analysis was to determine the best response to post-CBT treatment in patients who discontinued CBT due to progression of disease (PD), preparation for stem cell transplant (SCT), or toxicity. Patients who discontinued CBT due to CR, and patients whose best response could not be determined due to death from another cause were excluded from analysis. Responses were assessed using Lugano criteria. Survival status was analyzed for the entire study population and stratified by post-CBT treatment regimen and disease subgroups using the Kaplan-Meier method. Progression free survival (PFS) was calculated for patients with at least stable disease (SD) to post-CBT treatment. Log rank tests were performed to test for statistical significance. Two-sided P<0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: To date, out of 121 total lymphoma patients, a total of 77 HL patients received a subsequent line of therapy after CBT. Their median age was 37 (range 23-74); there were 38 men and 39 women. Fifty of these patients met inclusion criteria. Of the included patients, 15 were stages 1-2 and 35 were stages 3-4. These patients were heavily pre-treated with a median of 4 prior therapies before CBT (range 1-10). Thirty-one patients received prior brentuximab vedotin (BV) and 28 patients had undergone allogeneic (3) or autologous (25) SCT. The median duration of response (DOR) to the line of therapy prior to CBT was 3.5 months; 18 (36%) patients had relapsed disease, and the remaining 32 (64%) had refractory disease prior to CBT. The best response to CBT included: 2 (4%) CR, 21 (42%) partial response (PR), 13 (26%) SD, 14 (28%) PD. Patients discontinued CBT due to PD (72%), preparation for transplant (16%), toxicity (8%), CR after the addition of chemotherapy (2%), and an infectious complication (2%). Post-CBT treatment regimens included standard chemotherapy (46%), targeted therapy (22%), conditioning regimens for SCT (16%), other immunotherapy (4%), or clinical trial drugs (12%). The objective response rate (ORR) for all patients to post-CBT treatment was 52%: 17 (34%) CR and 9 (18%) PR. Eight (16%) patients achieved SD, while 16 (32%) patients progressed. Overall response rate to post-CBT treatment correlated with response to CBT itself. Among patients with a CR or PR to CBT, their ORR to post-CBT treatment was 70%, whereas for non-responders to CBT the ORR to post-CBT treatment was 37%. At a median time of follow-up of 14 months, the median PFS for patients who achieved a CR, PR, or SD to post-CBT treatment (n=34) is 10.7 months (Figure 1). Twenty (58.8%) of these patients have not yet progressed, and the OS has not been reached (Figure 2), as 85% of patients remain alive. Currently there is no statistical difference in survival based upon post-CBT treatment received (Figure 3, Table 1). However, of note 21 patients received SCT subsequent to their post-CBT treatment: 8 allo and 13 auto. All of these patients remain alive, however, 9 of 12 (75%) have progressed post SCT. Conclusions: In a heavily pretreated R/R HL population, treatment with CBT may sensitize patients to subsequent therapy, even after they progress on CBT. A response to CBT appears to correlate with response to post-CBT treatment, but PD to CBT did not preclude a response to subsequent therapy. Patient survival does not appear to be dependent upon the subsequent treatment regimen, although the majority of patients with at least stable disease went on to SCT. The long PFS in these patients is encouraging and may warrant further investigation. We plan to expand this analysis with additional patients prior to the December meeting. Disclosures Advani: Celgene: Research Funding; Roche/Genentech: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board, Research Funding; Kyowa: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board; Celgene: Research Funding; Astra Zeneca: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board; Takeda: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Autolus: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board; Millenium: Research Funding; Janssen: Research Funding; Regeneron: Research Funding; Bristol Myers Squibb: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board, Research Funding; Pharmacyclics: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Kura: Research Funding; Agensys: Research Funding; Infinity: Research Funding; Cell Medica: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board; Merck: Research Funding; Bayer: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board; Forty Seven Inc.: Research Funding; Gilead/Kite: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Participated in an advisory board, Research Funding. Herrera:AstraZeneca: Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Research Funding; Pharmacyclics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Research Funding; Merck, Inc.: Consultancy, Research Funding; Gilead Sciences: Research Funding; Genentech: Consultancy, Research Funding; Immune Design: Research Funding; KiTE Pharma: Consultancy, Research Funding. Chen:Millennium Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Research Funding; Genentech Inc.: Consultancy; Pharmacyclics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Affimed: Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Research Funding; Merck & Co., Inc.: Consultancy, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau. Ramchandren:Janssen: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pharmacyclics LLC an AbbVie Company: Consultancy, Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy; Merck: Research Funding. Assouline:BMS: Honoraria, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Pfizer: Honoraria, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Roche: Honoraria, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Novartis: Research Funding; Janssen: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding. Wagner-Johnston:Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Merck: Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding; ADC Therapeutics: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; JUNO: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; ASTEX: Research Funding; Novartis: Research Funding. Svoboda:Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pharmacyclics: Consultancy, Research Funding; KITE: Consultancy; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Kyowa: Consultancy; Regeneron: Research Funding; TG Therapeutics: Research Funding; Merck: Research Funding. Barta:Janssen: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Merck, Takeda, Celgene, Seattle Genetics, Bayer: Research Funding. Karmali:Gilead: Speakers Bureau; AstraZeneca: Speakers Bureau. Persky:Morphosys (IDMC): Consultancy; Spectrum: Research Funding; Genentech: Honoraria; Merck: Research Funding. Smith:Portola: Honoraria; BMS: Consultancy. Diefenbach:Trillium: Research Funding; Denovo: Research Funding; Millenium/Takeda: Research Funding; Acerta: Research Funding; Incyte: Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Merck: Consultancy, Research Funding; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Research Funding; Genentech: Consultancy.