Josephine Dun dies after dad’s desperate cancer research quest
The cancer researcher father of a four-year-old girl diagnosed with fatal brain cancer has announced she has lost her battle, 22 months after he vowed to find a drug to treat her illness.
NSW
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A young girl whose cancer researcher father was desperately searching for a treatment for her incurable brain cancer has died at the age of four.
Josephine (Jojo) Dun died on Saturday, 22 months after she was diagnosed with the most aggressive of brain stem tumours, called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
The fatal cancer has an average survival rate of just eight to 12 months and kills about 20 children a year in Australia.
Survival after radiation, which is the only standard treatment to shrink the tumour, is usually just one to two months.
Today Phoebe, George, Harriet and I shared Jojo’s last breath
— Matt Dun, PhD (@MattDun17) December 14, 2019
Words cannot describe our pain
Josephine Laura Dun, forever four
29-04-2015 to 14-12-2019#DIPG pic.twitter.com/mXwFtulOEd
In a statement posted on social media on Saturday, Josephine’s father Dr Matt Dun announced that his daughter had lost her battle with DIPG.
“Today Phoebe, George, Harriet and I shared Jojo’s last breath. Words cannot describe our pain. Josephine Laura Dun, forever four,” he said.
After Josephine’s diagnosis in February 2018, Dr Dun, a leukaemia researcher and Newcastle University biochemist from the Hunter Medical Research Institute, vowed to find a weak link that could be targeted by new drugs because DIPG does not respond to any chemotherapy drug.
He crowd-funded the groundbreaking research himself and was helped by Sunday Telegraph readers who chipped in more than $60,000 to fund Dr Dun’s research when his plight was revealed.
During extensive research, he and his team had a breakthrough, and found what Dr Dun described as a “promising drug” which they then began testing in the lab before receiving ethics approval to trial the drug, in combination with others, on Josephine.
In June, Dr Dun said they were fighting hard but not yet winning the battle. At the time, Josephine had been living more than twice as long as originally predicted.
“We are patching up, we are using band aid approaches to buy ourselves time until someone comes up with a miracle immunotherapy, we are not winning, but we are fighting tooth and nail.”
“She is a cool kid, she is spunky, and she just does it. Every day has huge challenges. It’s a two person, 24-hour a day, seven day a week marathon. I sleep with her every night since progression, I’m in the bed because she can’t roll over so I roll her over a couple of times a night and she wakes frequently during the night in pain. It’s just a nightmare,” Dr Dun said.
The father of three young children, and his GP wife Dr Phoebe Dun have also started a registered charity called RUN DIPG (rundipg.org) to help fund research for DIPG which has been underfunded for decades.
– with Jane Hansen