‘There’s an irony’: Worldwide cancer chief’s own fight with rare lymphoma

The new Union for International Cancer Control president is battling a rare disease known as mantle cell lymphoma.

Professor Jeff Dunn and his wife Suzanne while he undergoes cancer treatment in hospital. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

As prominent cancer-control expert Jeff Dunn took over the prestigious role of president of the global Union for International Cancer Control this week, he was unable to join its virtual general assembly to formally accept the role.

Instead, the behavioural scientist was resting in preparation to have his stem cells harvested for a transplant. There’s scarcely an expert more qualified than Professor Dunn, who already has a 30-year history of service at the UICC, to lead cancer control efforts. But now he has a special insight – the 64-year-old was recently diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma known as mantle cell lymphoma. “Friends have described it as like a soap opera script – two months before you take up the presidency of the global peak body, you get diagnosed with cancer,” says Professor Dunn, who is also the chief of mission and head of research for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.

“One friend wrote to me and said: ‘How could God be so rude?’.

“There’s an irony there, no question. It’s just a reminder again that cancer can affect any one of us at any time; this is the challenge of this disease.” After he felt tired for several weeks and then experienced significant swelling in his neck, doctors ordered investigations that led to Professor Dunn’s stage-3 mantle cell lymphoma diagnosis in mid-August. “No one wants to get any cancer, but if you were to choose one, you probably wouldn’t choose this one,” says Professor Dunn, who holds the roles of professor of social and behavioural science and chair of cancer survivorship as part of the University of Southern Queensland’s Centre for Health Research.

However, he remains upbeat about the future and is confident his treatment – which involves aggressive chemotherapy and then a stem cell transplant in December – will result in “many long years of complete remission”. And Professor Dunn intends to use his lived experience as a cancer patient to inform what he plans to make the hallmark of his two-year presidency of the UICC: a focus on survivorship care.

“With more people getting diagnosed because there’s more of us and we’re getting older, there’s more people surviving this disease for much longer,” he says. “So what is it about quality of life, what is it we do with people who get diagnosed and treated – some will carry physical and psychological side-effects for many, many years.

“So we need to ensure that they not only live, but that they live well.” He is also acutely aware most of the 20 million people globally diagnosed with cancer every year would not have access to the health care he has used. “So it’s going to make me even more strident in looking at our equity agenda,” he says.

Professor Dunn’s election as UICC president has been greeted with excitement by Australian scientists, including Nobel Prize-winner Ian Frazer, who described it as “an opportunity to harness Australia’s leadership and promote our cancer researchers on the world stage”. Adjunct Associate Professor Stephen Callister, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia national chairman, said the appointment was rightful recognition of Professor Dunn’s long track record in cancer control.