A third HIV patient is cured after a stem cell transplant

A study published this Monday in the journal Natural medicine report that A third HIV patient has managed to be cured after a stem cell transplant and that there is no longer a trace of the AIDS virus in his body. It is about a “patient from Düsseldorf” (Germany), before whom two other HIV patients had managed to be cured, the first of them in Berlin in 2009 and the second in London in 2019.

According to the international consortium iciStem, this third patient had received a stem cell transplant as part of the treatment for leukemia. As in the case of the other two patients, known as the “Berlin Patient” and “London Patient”, the transplant was done to treat an acute blood disorder, in his case leukemia, that had developed six months after he was diagnosed with HIV.

The Dusseldorf patient was diagnosed in January 2011 with acute myeloid leukemia, the most common type of leukemia among adults, with around 3,000 Britons and 20,000 Americans diagnosed each year.

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The patient underwent an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) in February 2013, supervised by an international research team, led by physicians from Dusseldorf University Hospital.

Blood cells from a donor, which carried a mutation in their CCR5 gene that made them resistant to HIV infection, were transported to replenish levels in the Dusseldorf patient. After, the man underwent chemotherapy and received infusions of donor lymphocytes, which are immune cells that can kill any remaining cancer cells.

After the stem cell transplant, the Dusseldorf patient continued to take antiretroviral therapy, which stops the replication of the virus in the body. However, HIV was undetectable in her blood, so she stopped taking the daily tablets in November 2018, six years after the stem cell transplant. The medical team kept him under close surveillance for four more years.

“I still remember very well the phrase from my family doctor: ‘Don’t take it so personally. We will experience together that HIV can be cured.” “At the time, I dismissed the statement as an alibi.” After that operation, he was able to interrupt the treatment he was following against HIV and in the analyzes they did they found no trace of the viral particlesof the viral reserves nor of the immune response against the virus.

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The man said he had decided to dedicate part of his time to supporting fundraising for HIV research and fighting stigmatization of the virus with his story.

The three patients who managed to be definitively cured of AIDS have the same point in common: all three suffered from blood cancer and for this reason they were treated with a stem cell transplant, which profoundly renewed their immune system. In all three cases, their donor had a rare mutation in the CCR5 gene, a genetic change that prevents HIV from entering cells.

“During a bone marrow transplant, the patient’s immune cells are completely replaced by cells from the donor, which makes it possible to eliminate the vast majority of infected cells,” explains the doctor in a statement. virologist Asier Sáez-Cirion, one of the authors of the study.

“This is an exceptional situation when all these factors coincide for this transplant to be a double success, both for curing leukemia and for HIV”added.

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The details of the case show that there was no resurgence of HIV or an increased immune response to the virus, which would have suggested that the virus was still present in his body. This allowed the team of doctors to declare the Dusseldorf patient to be in remission from HIV. They say the case provides “strong evidence” that the transplant cured him of the virus.

On behalf of the international team, the Dr. Bjorn-Erik Ole Jensen He said: “Following our intensive research, we can now confirm that it is quite possible to sustainably prevent HIV replication by combining two key methods.”

“On the one hand, we have the widespread depletion of the virus reservoir in long-lived immune cells, and on the other hand, the transfer of HIV resistance from the donor’s immune system to the recipient, ensuring that the virus has no possibility of spreading again,” he added.

Who are the patients who have been cured of HIV?

— The Berlin Patient (Timothy Ray Brown) in 2011

— The London patient (Adam Castillejo) in 2020

— The Dusseldorf patient (name unknown) in 2023

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