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“A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.
The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.
Dr. Gero Hütter isn’t an AIDS specialist, but he ‘functionally cured’ a patient, who shows no sign of the disease.
“I was very surprised,” said the doctor, Gero Hütter.
The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn’t an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
FANTASTIC! BUT WHILE THIS IS GREAT NEWS, IT IS NOT “NEW” NEWS…
Why does this sound familiar?
- The original article that got almost no coverage is from Wall Street Journal – Nov 2008 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle
- This article was then posted here in Feb 2009 – http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/stem-cells-hiv-part-2-a-doctor-a-mutation-and-a-potential-cure-for-aids-wsjcom/
- The abstract of the case was posted in the New England Journal of Medicine in Feb 2009 – See abstract below
SO WHY IS IT ONLY NOW GETTING PICKED UP BY THE MEDIA??
Some clarifications on the story:
- In this case, there were 80 compatible blood donors living in Germany and on the 61st sample tested, they found one with the “retrovirus resistant” mutation from both parents.
- I’ve been told the procedure cost about $150k.
Long-Term Control of HIV by CCR5 Delta32/Delta32 Stem-Cell Transplantation - SUMMARY
Infection with the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)requires the presence of a CD4 receptor and a chemokine receptor,principally chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5). Homozygosity for a32-bp deletion in the CCR5 allele provides resistance againstHIV-1 acquisition. We transplanted stem cells from a donor whowas homozygous for CCR5 delta32 in a patient with acute myeloidleukemia and HIV-1 infection. The patient remained without viralrebound 20 months after transplantation and discontinuationof antiretroviral therapy. This outcome demonstrates the criticalrole CCR5 plays in maintaining HIV-1 infection.