Leonidas Platanias, MD
Director of the Lurie Cancer Center @luriecancer.bsky.social of Northwestern University. Medical oncologist and cancer researcher. Views & opinions here are my own.
- This is awful. A young mother with young children who died from an aggressive form of leukemia. This is a reminder of how important medical research is. There will be a day that this leukemia will be curable. But only research can make this happen soon.
- Check presentation today by the incredible H Foundation from the Goombay Bash event earlier this summer. Their incredible philanthropic support of basic science research at the Lurie Cancer Center has had major impact on our efforts. So grateful for their support!
- “You can easily judge the character of a someone by how they treat those who can do nothing for them.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
- At the Department of Biochemistry& Molecular Genetics annual holiday event with the greatest Chair of Biochemistry Ali Shilatifard & the incredible Feng Yue who just published a major article @nature.com !
- "I don't write music for critics. I write music for God." Anton Bruckner (1824 - 1896)
- “Τι νέοι που φτάσαμεν εδώ, στο έρμο νησί, στο χείλος του κόσμου, δώθε απ’ τ’ όνειρο και κείθε απ’ τη γη!” Kostas Karyotakis (1896 - 1928)
- With our amazing community advisory board of @luriecancer.bsky.social today!
- Μέρα του Απρίλη Πράσινο λάμπος, γελούσε ο κάμπος με το τριφύλλι. Ως την εφίλει το πρωινό θάμπος, η φύση σάμπως γλυκά να ομίλει. Εκελαδούσαν πουλιά, πετώντας όλο πιο πάνω. Τ’ άνθη ευωδούσαν. Κι είπε απορώντας: «Πώς να πεθάνω;» Διάκος poem Kostas Karyotakis (1896 -1928)
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- The @luriecancer.bsky.social (LCC) went thru the competing renewal of NCI designation. For a 2nd time we got "exceptional" ranking. The NCI site visit team gave us a "perfect exceptional" (equivalent to 10). LCC is one of few in the nation and the only one in IL to ever achieve exceptional status.
- One of the worst possible premieres of a symphony, was the premiere of Symphony #1 of Rachmaninoff in 1897. It was conducted by Glazunov (a famous composer himself later) who was drunk at the time and was disastrous. Rachmaninoff suffered severe depression after that.
- All the big breakthroughs in cancer have started with NIH and NCI funded research. Every single medication or curative approach used in cancer patients is the direct or indirect result of NIH/NCI funded research.
- Johanna Senfter (1879 - 1961) was a remarkable composer with amazing violin and piano works. Her only recorded Symphony 4, has very strong Brucknerian influences and is absolutely stunning. But she has written 9 in total. Hard to understand why her work is being ignored.
- The reason so many diseases are cured has been the investment of the USA to medical research via NIH support. Without strong support for the NIH, important medical breakthroughs would have never happened. And drugs that cure or control diseases would have never existed.
- “No, science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere”. Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)
- "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "universe," a part limited in time and space." Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
- “The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
- Cancer mortality rates have been dropping because of NIH and NCI funded research to Universities. Without it there would be no new cancer treatments that save lives.
- “Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.” Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895)
- The impact of science and medicine in saving billions of lives can not be measured in dollars. Human life is priceless.
- Since its discovery in 1882, over 1 billion people have died from tuberculosis, including great composers, like Chopin, Purcell, Lili Boulanger, Stravinsky. One can only imagine how the world would be today if medical research had not found TB drugs. Science is priceless.
- "History shows us the life of nations and can find nothing to relate except wars and insurrections; the years of peace appear here and there only as short pauses, as intervals between the acts". Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
- “Everything I discovered was new and most of it was really valuable”. Alice Hamilton (1869 - 1970)
- Chicago
- Alfredo Casella is one of the greatest Italian composers of all time. And his classical music compositions are not Italian at all. Heavy Mahler and Strauss influence. And even a hint of Bruckner. But very unique style. Incredible composer.
- One of the saddest, but also most beautiful, compositions by an American composer is the Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. It was written during the Great Depression in 1938, and reflects the feelings and sadness of that era. A remarkable piece of classical music.
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- The data are clear. Cancer mortality rates have been decreasing. And this is, undoubtedly, because of cancer research that results in new treatments. Medical research saves lives. pressroom.cancer.org/2025CancerFa...
- Symphony 2 of Mahler is incredible. It is a unique combination of deep inspiration, emotional power and hope. Among the best performances of this symphony is the one by Gustavo Dudamel with the Berliner Philarmoniker. Exceptional.
- “The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking.” Alexander Graham Bell (1847 - 1922)
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- "Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable." Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924)
- "Our investment in medical and cancer research has placed the United States at the forefront of a worldwide medical research effort and improved our competitiveness internationally". Mary Lasker (1900 - 1994)
- So Brahms had called Bruckner's symphonies "symphonic boa constrictors" as a way to insult Bruckner. Besides being totally inappropriate, it is hard to understand what he was trying to say.
- Every treatment used in medical practice, from aspirin to the most complicated chemotherapy regimens, was research at some point. Without medical research, there would be no medical treatments. Medical research saves lives.
- “Medical research is a gift-a legacy that we leave for the next generation. The beauty of our National Cancer Program is that we have all lived to see its gifts—the even million Americans whose lives have been saved.” Mary Lasker (1900 - 1994)
- “Our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in universe is challenged. Our planet is a lonely speck in the cosmic dark. In our obscurity, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
- On this day in 1827, Beethoven died at 56 from liver cirrhosis from chronic hepatitis B. There is also a theory that he suffered from hereditary haemochromatosis. Remarkably, lead poisoning from "medical treatments" at the time had also contributed to liver/renal failure.
- “In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.” David Bohm (1917 - 1992)
- “I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien.” Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943)* *died on this day 85 years ago from malignant melanoma
- “Problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.” Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951)
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) was a philosophical genius and in my opinion the greatest philosopher of all time, after the ancient Greeks. But I never understood why his favorite composer was Rossini. Incomprehensible.
- "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure". Emil Cioran (1911 - 1995)
- Chicago
- Chicago
- "Οταν ακούσεις ποδοβολητά λύκων, ο Θεός μαζί σου! Ξαπλώσου χάμου με μάτια κλειστά και κράτησε την πνοή σου." Kostas Karyotakis (1896 - 1928)
- We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
