Luca Mazzarella

Oncologist, clinician scientist, failed drummer, accomplished father

[raz sauber - רז זאובר @raz_sauber_]

This is the cancer research building at the Weizmann Institute, hit directly. The brand-new chemistry building was also destroyed. Damage is estimated at over $500 million - but some losses can’t be measured: years of knowledge and research for the sake of all humanity, gone in an instant.

[prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️ @mrexits]

I think about this legend all the time

[Ander Bruckestand @Ander_Bruckes]

🧵 Uno sguardo al lavoro accademico di Orsini.

In precedenza avevo fatto notare come il suo h-index non fosse entusiasmante. Questo grafico (fonte: Scopus) mostra l'andamento temporale di pubblicazioni (7) e citazioni (107).

@mastrobradipo
@NathalieTocci
@corradoformigli

1/➡️

[Daniele Viotti @danieleviotti]

Uno straordinario @Fornaro62 oggi ha dato una lezione di Storia e Democrazia a Meloni spiegando in due minuti il valore del Manifesto di Ventotene

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

@SteSantaguida @ScienceMagazine grande stefano e tutti! congratsss

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

@HuffPostItalia grazie per esposto il nostro lavoro. ci sono voluti 10 anni ma ne è valsa la pena!

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

I can prove to you in one word that the alleged “Pro-Palestinian” protests worldwide are:

At best, anti-Israel based on ignorance;

At worst, wildly antisemitic and/or hatefully anti-Israel; and

The one thing they are NOT is “pro-Palestinian.”

That word?

Yarmouk.

Yarmouk was, only ~12 years ago, the Syrian city with the world’s largest Palestinian community. At least ~160,000 Palestinians lived there.

Once Syrian dictator and butcher Bashar al-#Assad got his grimy hands on Yarmouk, it wasn’t long before journalists were calling the city “the worst place on earth.”

Why? Several reasons; and I’ll tell you those reasons along with the world’s reaction to them. Then, you decide what that means.

On Dec 16, 2012, the Syrian air force bombed Yarmouk killing at least “dozens” of civilians (the real number may never be known). The streets of #NewYork, #LosAngeles, #Chicago, #Toronto, #London, #Paris, #Rome, #Dublin, etc.? All quiet.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled Yarmouk & were displaced without anywhere to go & without knowing if/when they may ever return.

For the Palestinians who stayed in Yarmouk, they could not possibly have imagined the #dystopian hellscape that awaited them over the next six+ years.

First, Assad enforced a brutal and complete one-year-long #siege on Yarmouk. He then continued that siege, only with a few exceptions, for another 5-6 years after that.

Were the streets of the world filled with protestors?

No.

There was no electricity in Yarmouk for a year, and very little electrictiy for the next five years.

No protests.

There was no piped water whatsoever in Yarmouk for a year, and very little drinkable water for the next five years.

No protests.

There was no access to or very minimal access to any food for a year & very little food for the next five years.

No protests.

Medical supplies were next to zero, as Assad did not want to risk them ending up in the hands of opposition fighters hiding in Yarmouk - Palestinian civilians be damned.

Even worse - after the initial fleeing of tens of thousands, the remaining Palestinians of Yarmouk were not allowed to leave the city - Assad made them stay there.

So, in the largest Palestinian city in Syria, Palestinian civilians were indiscriminately slaughtered, tens of thousands fled, and then Assad laid total siege to the remaining tens of thousands of Palestinians during which men, women, children, the elderly, the infirm, & babies were all forced to stay in Yarmouk without electricity, without water, with minimal access to food, and with little to no access to any medication or first aid of any kind.

And there were no #protests.

The number of Palestinians who died of malnutrition and the number of Palestinian women & their babies who died in childbirth during the siege is unknown to this day.

There was no worldwide outcry.

There was no push for real numbers of the dead and the suffering.

There were no protests.

There was near total silence.

Much has been made about the humanitarian corridors & humanitarian aide that Israel has allowed to flow into Gaza despite Hamas terrorists using the corridors to escape, and despite well over 50% of that aide being stolen by Hamas.

Well, in Syria, Assad refused to provide a humanitarian corridor; and he refused to allow humanitarian relief into Yarmouk.

The streets of the world?

Silent.

One Palestinian woman in Yarmouk described the scene:

“You couldn’t buy bread. At the worst point a kilo of rice cost 12,000 Syrian pounds (£41), now it is 800 pounds (£2.75) compared to 100 Syrian pounds (34p) in central Damascus. It was 900 pounds (£3.10) for a kilo of tomatoes … we used to eat wild plants. We picked and cooked them. In every family there was hepatitis because of a lack of sugar. The water was dirty. People had fevers. Your joints and bones felt stiff. My middle daughter had brucellosis and there was no medication.”

Silence. Deafening silence.

So many Palestinians in Yarmouk were dying from malnutrition that Yarmouk’s largest #mosque gave a religious decree (fatwa) that permitted the consumption of dogs, cats, and donkeys.

Shocking silence.

In 2014, testing on a random sample of Palestinians in Yarmouk showed 40% had typhoid.

Silence.

All 28 of Yarmouk’s schools were shuttered.

Silence.

Even after the initial total siege ended, the water supply was not restored. The city’s water pipes were damaged in fighting in September 2014 - leading to ~four more years during which Yarmouk’s Palestinians had to drink untreated groundwater.

Where were the protestors?

During and after the complete siege, Assad began a campaign of particularly heavy indiscriminate bombing of Yarmouk that saw civilians, including children on playgrounds, blown up. How many? We can say “thousands,” but we will probably never know how many for sure.

The world? Silent.

A #UN official anonymously admitted about Yarmouk, “Conditions are far worse than #Gaza … Palestinians always had dignity, hope, resilience. Now after four years of war I see people giving up. They find it hard to accept there are no options.”

Even the virulently anti-Israel commentator, #Mehdi Hasan, who recently lost his job for being too viciously anti-Israel even for #MSNBC (!) admitted in April of 2015:

“Let’s be honest: how different, how vocal and passionate, would our reaction be if the people besieging Yarmouk were wearing the uniforms of the IDF?”

By that point in time, Yarmouk was widely called the city with the “worst humanitarian crisis” since World War II.

But the streets of the world were not filled with protestors. There was barely a peep.

Meanwhile, many of the long-suffering Palestinians of Yarmouk started obtaining desperately needed medical assistance from what many may consider an unlikely source: Israel.

Starting in June 2016, the #IDF launched “Operation Good Neighbor” to help civilians in #Syria.

At first, #Syrians who could make it across the border were transported to #Israeli hospitals, and later Israel opened a field hospital close to the border since so many civilians started seeking Israel’s help.

One Palestinian from Yarmouk feared enough for her son’s life to seek help from “enemy” #doctors in Israel. When her son was treated with care and humanity and nursed back to health, she told journalists, anonymously for her own safety back home, “I used to see Israel as an occupying power, but not anymore. My whole opinion of Israel has changed.”

In total, Israel treated at least between 5,000-10,000 wounded and often starving civilians who crossed the border from Syria.

Israel even started a donation drive & collected supplies like toys, crayons, games, & candies for suffering children; and Israel got those donations across the border quietly, along with government-donated dire necessities like food, fuel, clothing, & baby care.

How many stood up to praise Israel for its humanity?

Very, very few. And outside the #Jewish world, almost none.

The worst of the dire situation in Yarmouk went on for more than six years.

In April of 2018, Yarmouk was being bombed twice every 90 seconds. By the end of that month, Al Jazeera estimated at least 60% of Yarmouk had been completely destroyed & an unknown number of Palestinian families were trapped under the rubble.

By May of 2018, journalists simplified it: “Yarmouk is gone” (see photo below).

How many pro-Palestinian protests in how many cities do you recall in April and May of 2018?

How many protests do you recall for the entirety of those six years from 2012-2018?

Sadly, for those innocent #Palestinian civilians who lived under the yoke of #dictatorship - whether #Assad or Hamas - their outrageously inhumane plight was almost entirely ignored by a disinterested world.

Yet, how many streets of how many cities across the world were already filled with protestors during the first days and weeks after the Hamas #October7Massacre of more than 1,200 #Israelis?

The streets worldwide were filled even before Israel had begun its counter-offensive to rescue the more than 240 hostages taken by #Hamas and to bring Hamas #terrorists to justice and forever end Hamas’ ability to make war on Israel.

What more evidence could anyone need?

The worldwide protests are all about being anti-Israel and/or #antisemitic.

They certainly are not about saving any Palestinians.

Sadly, when the #Palestinians have needed the world to save them from other #Arabs, nobody marched.

Only when #Jews are involved - that’s when the venom, the hate, the motivation, and the organization to protest and intimidate comes out.

#Education #Israel #Palestine

[Zarina Zabrisky 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @ZarinaZabrisky]

🔴 #Trump spoke of abandoning #NATO first time in Sept 1987, two months after his first visit to #Moscow on the invitation of Intourist, the Soviet cover for intelligence operations.

He bought full-page ads in the NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe for $94,801.

🧵1.

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

This photo is 113 years old.

It was taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an early pioneer of colour photography.

If you've ever wondered what the world used to look like, Prokudin-Gorsky's photos will show you...

[Gyruum 🇺🇦 @Gyruum]

Oggi sfogliamo insieme alcuni libri di scuola italiani, ma dall'amaro retrogusto di propaganda russa. Geografia rivisitata, Storia riscritta, e un'Ucraina che anche sui più utilizzati libri scolastici soffre sotto il peso della disinformazione.
1/15 🧵

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

CR can reveal cancer's weak spots. And we can combine metabolic and epigenetic modulation to deprive cancer of its adaptation ability.
The longest project of my life to date (>10 years). Can't be grateful enough to the many collaborators that contributed

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

So. A long way to go before these results generate useful treatments for humans. But we provide a more nuanced view of what CR does on tumors.
Once formed, cancer has its own tools to resist starvation. CR (or any nutrient modulation) cannot be therapeutic by itself. But

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

3) CR and LSD1 both modulated endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), which were responsible for the intrinsic interferon response. ERVs are enormously interesting genetic elements in our genome, relics of ancestral infections. Why is CR modulating ERVs? to be found out in the future

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

1) the CR-LSD1 inhibitor combo synergized also in a mouse model of breast cancer. So maybe a mechanism involved in multiple tumors
2) CR could be partially mimicked by drugs that inhibit insulin signaling, but not other CR mimetics. LSD1 is specific only for some effects of CR

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

Virtually ALL mice ERADICATED leukemia. No sign of it, already a week after treatment. And especially no more nasty CSCs.
Drug-treated mice adapted well to CR, so effect is specific for tumor, sparing healthy cells.
We also show a couple more of interesting points:

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

"Doctor, what should I eat?"
Caloric restriction. Prevents #cancer. But how good is it AFTER one gets cancer? a question often asked by my patients, but surprisingly understudied. We provide some unexpected answers https://t.co/JUZu6KfCVz w/@rpallavi13, PGPelicci @IEOufficiale🧵

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

The interferon suppression was dramatically dependent on one single factor, the master epigenetic regulator LSD1. Many drugs have been developed against it, so we tested one of these in combination with CR, and now BAM!

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

And why is that? CR massively reduced the interferon response, which we use to fight viral infections and...cancer. A well known CR effect, probably beneficial for prevention, but then probably bad for cure.
But here came a second surprise. A pleasant one, this time

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

a big nasty surprise came when we measured the effect of CR on Cancer Stem Cells (CSC). These are thought to be responsible for relapse after an initial response to therapy.
You'd think that if CR-->good, then CSCs would be lower. WRONG.
CR 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 these cells ~5x

[Luca Mazzarella @matsadoc]

We tested what happens to mice with Leukemia when they slim down through CR. We studied a particular leukemia (APL), which we know is more common and nastier in obese https://t.co/TgfeMLDLNV. If fat--> bad, slim (CR)--> good, right? Yes, CR mice lived longer. BUT..