Newcastle researcher and professor Matt Dun was told in 2018 his two-year-old daughter Josephine was living with a deadly form of brain cancer.<\/p>\n
“One day she refused to walk,” Dr Dun said.<\/p>\n
Josie was diagnosed with an incurable brain cancer known as diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).<\/p>\n
She was the first child in the world given a new therapy called paxalisib which slowed the tumour’s growth, giving her another year of life.<\/p>\n
She died 22 months later.<\/p>\n
“When your eldest child dies, and has three younger siblings who don’t really understand how someone can be here one minute and die the next, it’s really hard for everybody associated with this disease,” he said.<\/p>\n
“What can you say? There is nothing worse.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Matt Dun’s daughter, Josephine, passed away in 2019, 22 months after she was diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer. (Supplied: Matt Dun)<\/p>\n
Dr Matt Dun said losing his daughter to brain cancer was the driving force in finding a cure.<\/p>\n
He remains even more hopeful after receiving an $18.7 million grant from the federal government to continue his research into developing life saving treatment to cure high-grade gliomas (HGGs).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr Dun and his team have identified a critical gene that drives the growth and survival of HGGs. (Supplied: University of Newcastle)<\/p>\n
“The problem with HGGs is they don’t grow as massive cells, they grow as diffuse spindles in the brain. You can never possibly cut them all out,” Dr Dun said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve identified one of the mechanisms that these tumours use to escape standard care therapies.<\/p>\n
“We think if we can target this gene within the brain we can stop these tumours from becoming resistant.”Loading…<\/p>\n
The aim is to start clinical trials at paediatric and oncology hospitals all over Australia in five years.<\/p>\n
“By the end of the five year period we’ll hopefully be guaranteed to have a therapy that targets the gene we’re interested in,” he said.<\/p>\n
A sense of hope<\/p>\n
Sydney resident Bridget Pullman lost her nine-year-old daughter Evie to the same form of brain cancer in 2021.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bridget Pullman was told her daughter had an incurable brain cancer when she was just nine years old. (Supplied: Bridget Pullman)<\/p>\n
Ms Pullman said seeing funding go towards finding a cure brings a sense of hope to families struggling with the disease.<\/p>\n
“It helps continue the fight and you feel that your child’s life wasn’t in absolute vain,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It means other families will get some other kind of treatment plan which isn’t radiation.”<\/p>\n
Ms Pullman said it gives future families dealing with the disease strength their child could live a life.<\/p>\n
“Hope is the one thing that keeps you going,” she said.<\/p>\n
The grant will officially kick off at the beginning of 2026, providing five years of funding to initiate a clinical trial in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle researcher and professor Matt Dun was told in 2018 his two-year-old daughter Josephine was living with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,108602,108601,137,108605,108606,108603,108604],"class_list":["post-165075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brain-cancer-cure","tag-brain-cancer-treatment","tag-health","tag-hgg","tag-high-grade-gliomas","tag-matt-dun","tag-matt-dun-and-daughter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}