Cancer researcher Matt Dun lost his little girl to an aggressive brain tumour - an anguish he is fighting to stop others from experiencing. or signup to continue reading His two-year-old daughter Josephine was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) in 2018. Professor Dun, a pediatric leukaemia research specialist, began researching the brain cancer after discovering palliative radiation was the only therapy available.
"I faced the most challenging and tragic circumstances," he told AAP. Through genetic sequencing of Josephine's tumour, the determined father and his team identified a gene critical to the cancer's development. She became the world's first child to be given the new therapies, which slowed the tumour's growth and extended her short life.
"The therapies stabilised the disease and Josie learnt to walk again, swim and have her one and only dance concert," Prof Dun said. "And we had a great Christmas with her cousins and our family." Josephine died in December 2019 at the age of four.
Prof Dun will be awarded the Australian Society for Medical Research Medal at the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday. "I'm constantly reminded of the courage of children that are diagnosed with it now and those of the future," he said. "So it continues to drive me forward, and thanks to the generosity of the Australian public, I'm supported to do so and to make a difference.
" In an address, Prof Dun will share his family's story to make the case for greater fundi.
