<div id="readability-page-1">When National Basketball Association veteran Jason Collins married his long-term partner Brunson Green in May, having to divert his honeymoon to Singapore six months later for an experimental treatment for stage 4 brain cancer was not on his bingo card.\nThe 2.13 metre (7 feet) former centre, 47, and Green, a film producer, found themselves spending Thanksgiving in the city state last month, far from their extended family, as Collin underwent his first doses of EDV (EnGeneIC Dream Vector) in his battle against the most aggressive form of brain cancer.\nLast Thursday, Collins, the first openly gay man to play in a major US professional sports league, announced that he was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) on August 30 and was pursuing an innovative treatment in a clinic in Singapore, where he got approval under compassionate reasons “within 48 hours”.\nHad he done nothing about his cancer, doctors told Collins, who played 13 seasons in the NBA, that he would have been dead in six weeks to three months.\nSpeaking to This Week in Asia about how he felt about his diagnosis while he was enjoying retirement as a newlywed, Collins smiled and said: “It’s life.”\n“Life is so complicated that the energy that it takes to have negative energy, it’s like, why? Let’s try to help, let’s be positive and bring people together,” he added with a chuckle as the EDV treatment was being administered intravenously into his bloodstream.\n\nCollins is about midway through an eight-week stint at Curie Oncology in the city state as he undergoes the experimental cancer therapy by the biopharmaceutical company EnGeneIC, which uses antibody-targeted, bacterially derived nano cells that have a rigid cell wall that can access tumours via leaky blood vessels in and around them.\nEach nano cell is filled with highly potent toxic substances that can kill cancer cells. When a nano cell locks onto a cancer cell and is swallowed by it, the toxic substances inside the cancer cell rush out and kill it – akin to a Trojan horse.\n“It feels like when you get a very strong flu shot, and I can feel my immune system recognising that something’s been injected into the body. So you get very flushed, like a fever, you’re tired, and your blood pressure spikes a little bit, but other than that, it hasn’t been bad at all,” said Collins, while his husband Green noted that the side effects were not nearly as toxic as traditional chemotherapy.\nThe couple learned about EDVs from one of Collins’ high school friends. After Green reached out to the founders of EnGeneIC, Singapore was soon identified as the quickest way to get the treatment.\nJennifer MacDiarmid, co-founder of EnGeneIC, told This Week in Asia in a phone interview: “He talked to [people on] lots of different potential therapies, and he found us. His own physicians weren’t keen to do an experimental one until he’d gone through the whole first line and second line, but by that time, with this disease, people can die. They can become totally non-responsive.”\nThe medical system in the United States doesn’t move as quickly as it does here\nJason Collins, ex-NBA player\nCollins agreed, saying: “The medical system in the United States doesn’t move as quickly as it does here.”\nOn whether it was a tough decision to spend his limited time away from home, he said: “It was difficult, but when you think about it, it’s a no-brainer, because you don’t want to just sit at home. I love my family, but I would like to try to extend time … And I know about the decline, and how quickly it can happen, so I don’t want that, and had to do something in between.”\nCurrently, aside from the EDV treatment, Collins is on a cocktail of treatments that he and Green have researched by speaking to other carers and medical experts about, while also employing artificial intelligence to sieve through publicly available data.\nThey went to nearby Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to get an Electro Capacitive Cancer Therapy device that uses low-frequency, low-intensity electrostatic fields to target and destroy cancer cells. He is also on antidepressant Brintellix and targeted cancer therapy Avastin, which vastly improved Collins’ condition in September.\nSince arriving in Singapore in late November, Collins said he had connected with mutual friends, largely through the NBA network, who have been generous to him and his family, including by hosting them for Thanksgiving dinner and offering them a place to stay in exchange for dog-sitting.\nAside from getting tired more frequently, Collins has been well enough to explore the city state and try local foods like chilli crab and even clocked a two-hour walk around Orchard Road and the Singapore Botanic Gardens on Sunday and spent a few days in a resort in Bintan, Indonesia, for his and Green’s birthdays.\n“It’s kind of funny, because a lot of people, if they were just looking at my Instagram, would think we’re on a food tour,” he says.\nCollins’ current demeanour is a far cry from his condition in mid-August when he was struggling with short-term memory “like Dory in Finding Nemo”, he said, and in September when he described himself as “basically a vegetable”.\n\n“We didn’t know if he would ever come back,” said Green, as he recounted a cognitive test Collins underwent after his biopsy in Los Angeles, when he was not able to name a tennis racquet on a picture card despite being an avid player and fan of the sport. “It was really scary for us.”\nSince the news broke of his diagnosis last week, Collins said his phone had been blowing up, largely with supportive messages and suggestions for treatments and specialists. He likened the experience to when he first came out in 2013.\n“Since 2013, when I came out, I would rather just be open and say, this is what I’m going through, this is what I’m dealing with and if you can help somebody along the way, great. I always try to help,” said Collins, who attributed his ability to be open to his support system.\nMacDiarmid told This Week in Asia that compassionate cases like Collins’ gave EnGeneIC important data going into clinical trials, including a trial for GBM that she hoped would begin in Singapore in January or February next year. The company has opened a subsidiary in the city state.\n“This data from compassionate cases… gives us good signals as to which tumours are potentially going to be responsive, and certainly we are very interested in [GBM], because we’ve got a couple of patients here and in Singapore who are all doing well,” she said, lauding Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority for being very open to helping people at the end stage of their life.\nMacDiarmid said the goal for EnGeneIC was to get the treatment approved for the mass market quickly, which could take about two years.\nPresident of the Brain Tumour Society (Singapore) Melissa Lim said that it took “superhuman effort” from all involved to bring an experimental treatment like EDVs into Singapore. “Every line of them had the determination to bring it in, and people are now coming to Singapore for EnGeneIC, like Jason.”\n\nLim noted that the statistics were stacked against survivors, and in her 20 years of experience in GBM cases, she had only come across two who lived more than five years after they were diagnosed. According to the Glioblastoma Research Organisation, GBM’s median survival rate for adults is 14.6 months.\n“I’ve come to the point that each heartbreak has led to a result that this has to stop, something’s got to be done about it, it’s broken to the point where it’s grown into a determination,” said Lim, whose society supports some 300 families in Singapore.\nAside from Collins, another patient receiving the EDV treatment for his brain cancer is a 74-year-old man who preferred to remain anonymous.\nHis wife told This Week in Asia that since her husband began treatment in September at his doctor’s recommendation, he had his appetite return, and was able to get up from bed himself and shave himself in about five minutes.\nShe noticed a drastic change in her husband’s condition within the first few weeks of trying the therapy in terms of his tiredness and ability to do things on his own.\n“Each week, I can see the improvement. It’s given us a window of hope,” the carer said.\n</div>

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<p>Ex-NBA player Jason Collins, diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme, is undergoing experimental treatment in Singapore. Collins, who married Brunson Green in May, diverted his honeymoon for the treatment. He is receiving EDV therapy, which uses nano cells to target cancer. Despite the challenges, Collins remains positive and is exploring Singapore. He emphasizes the importance of positivity and proactive action in his battle against cancer.</p>

Ex-NBA star in Singapore for brain cancer treatment exudes hope – ‘let’s be positive’