When Paul Bunn, Jr, MD, FASCO, began treating patients with lung cancer at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1976, treatments and outcomes for the disease were dismal. “We did 12 to 15 trials of new drugs and none of them worked,” he recalls. “While chemotherapy did a lot to improve things, it was very toxic and not ideal.” It was a stark contrast to today when the incidence and survival rates are much improved because of a reduction in smoking prevalence, better screening protocols, and innovative interventions such as immunotherapy, Dr. Bunn says. Although lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer death, 5-year survival rates for advanced forms of the disease have jumped from 5% in the 1970s to between 16% and 18% now. If the disease is detected in its early, localized stage, those survival rates increase to approximately 56% according to the American Lung Association. There is still work to do, particularly in treating stage IV disease, Dr. Bunn emphasizes, but “people are living much longer and better.” During his noteworthy career as a physician, researcher, and leader of cancer organizations, Dr. Bunn has not just witnessed this important progress in the field—he has played a key role in it. That much is clear from his curriculum vitae. Dr. Bunn launched the NCI-designated University of Colorado (CU) Cancer Center in 1988 and served as its director until 2009. He was president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) from 2002 to 2003 and was executive director of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer from 2003 to 2013. He has also served as a principal investigator for national and local clinical trials, including the CU Cancer Center’s NCI Specialized Program of Research Excellence in lung cancer; the program fast-tracks the movement of new treatments into clinical settings. His legacy in oncology research also includes more than 320 peer-reviewed articles, 200 reviews, and 90 book chapters, and this is the reason that he was awarded ASCO’s prestigious David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award and Lecture in 2016. Today, he is a distinguished professor at the CU Cancer Center and the James Dudley Chair in Lung Cancer Research at the university’s school of medicine. “Paul is a fantastic clinician and person of huge integrity, and he’s tremendously well organized,” says his longtime friend and colleague, John Minna, MD, director of the Hamon Center for Therapeutic Oncology Research and the Moncrief Center for Cancer Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Indeed, says Dr. Minna, who first worked with Dr. Bunn early in his career at the NCI, the ability to take good ideas and organize himself and others to implement them has been a hallmark of Dr. Bunn’s career. For example, during those initial years in lung cancer research, he says, trials were often not well designed or executed. However, Dr. Bunn “mobilized the fellows, nurses, and other staff in the design so that [trials were] logical, founded on fact, and innovative,” Dr. Minna says. Dr. Bunn later put those same skills to work in building the CU Cancer Center. Initially, he had been recruited to lead the Division of Medical Oncology at CU, but when local leaders decided that the area needed a new NCI cancer facility, they looked to him. Under Dr. Bunn’s leadership, the institution grew to more than 400 members hailing from 3 Colorado universities and 6 medical institutions. It is the state’s only NCI-designated consortium comprehensive cancer center. “He started from scratch with the Cancer Center…It was a lot of recruiting and hard work—I give him a huge amount of credit,” Dr. Minna says. At ASCO, Dr. Bunn oversaw the development of an official tobacco policy, the addition of meetings on different disease types, and efforts to increase international membership and involvement. Similarly, he initiated important changes at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, such as increasing the frequency of World Conference on Lung Cancer meetings from every 3 years to every year and significantly expanding membership, and he helped to guide the Journal of Th oracic Oncology to becoming what is arguably one of the top 20 medical journals in oncology. Moreover, Dr. Bunn has been instrumental in developing and leading the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium, a group of 16 leading cancer centers dedicated to conducting prospective studies in patients with non–small cell lung cancer and helping to match them with the best possible targeted molecular therapies and immunotherapy. The past decade has seen drugs approved for 4 molecular abnormalities, including EGFR, RAS1, BRAF, and ALK1, with another 4 drugs likely to receive approval in the next couple of years. However, Dr. Bunn notes that challenges remain, including the need to develop treatments for KRAS and p53 mutations, both of which are common in many patients with lung cancer. His leadership of the consortium, Dr. Minna notes, has been pivotal in bringing targeted molecular therapies to patients. “In terms of his putting together and leading teams to show this could work in patients in the real world, it happened sooner than it otherwise would have,” he says. “It was entirely his brainchild.” Growing up outside Syracuse, New York, Dr. Bunn was always around physicians: both his father and uncle, along with other relatives, practiced medicine. Still, he initially thought that he would become an attorney, and as a student at Amherst College, he planned to study political science. Th at changed when he found himself exceling in math and science. He instead decided to take premed courses and apply to medical school, and he graduated from Cornell University Medical School in 1971. At the time, during the waning years of the Vietnam War, “100% of [male] graduates were being drafted,” Dr. Bunn recalls. He decided to take advantage of the Berry Plan, a Vietnam War–era program that allowed physicians to defer their military service until after they had completed their residencies. However, after Dr. Bunn had finished his residency at the University of California, San Francisco, he came across another option for serving his country: working as a fellow with the US Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health. From there, he went on to work under Dr. Minna at the NCI Veterans Administration and Navy Medical Oncology branches. Together with colleagues, they treated patients and worked on developing new treatments and clinical trials for both lung cancer and lymphoma. “We were caring for incredibly sick patients and having to make very difficult decisions, and it was great to feel that Paul had your back and vice versa,” Dr. Minna says. “There also were certain people at the NCI and in cancer research who were pretty pompous, and Paul saw the humor in that.” Characterizing Dr. Bunn as extremely accessible with a sense of playfulness, Dr. Minna says, “If I had to have a doctor for cancer, Paul is the person I’d want.” Today, although Dr. Bunn has closed his own laboratory, where he had been investigating novel growth factor inhibitors and combinations of inhibitors in lung cancer cells, he regularly sees patients and enrolls them into clinical trials, and he still finds this work rewarding. “In other specialties, you’re doing procedures all the time, but in cancer you’re treating people and you get to know them and their families,” he says. “The fact that it’s a serious disease makes those relationships especially meaningful.” In his spare time, he channels the athletic side that he demonstrated as a high school and college football and lacrosse player, fitting in tennis, biking, and skiing. He also travels and enjoys spending time with his 3 children and 6 grandchildren in Colorado. It has given him a full schedule, but staying busy, he says with a laugh, has never been a problem.
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Open Access
Jan 17, 2023
+ 19