Success means there will be a much larger pool of potential donors, researchers hope (Representational)
Paris:
A 60-year-old German man is probably the seventh person to be effectively cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant, doctors announced on Thursday.
The painful and risky procedure is intended for people who have HIV and aggressive leukemia, so it is not an option for nearly all of the nearly 40 million people living with the deadly virus around the world.
The German, who preferred to remain anonymous, was dubbed “Berlin’s next patient”.
The original Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, was the first person declared cured of HIV in 2008. Brown died of cancer in 2020.
The second Berlin man to achieve long-term HIV remission has been announced ahead of the 25th International AIDS Conference, which takes place in the German city of Munich next week.
He was first diagnosed with HIV in 2009, according to the research summary presented at the conference.
The man received a bone marrow transplant for leukemia in 2015. The procedure, which carries a 10 percent risk of death, essentially replaces a person’s immune system.
He then stopped taking antiretroviral medications – which reduce the amount of HIV in the blood – at the end of 2018.
Nearly six years later, he appears to be free of HIV and cancer, medical researchers said.
Christian Gaebler, a physician-researcher at Berlin’s Charite University Hospital who is caring for the patient, told AFP that the team cannot be “absolutely certain” that all traces of HIV have been eradicated.
But “the patient’s case is highly suggestive of a cure for HIV,” Gaebler added. “He feels good and is excited to contribute to our research efforts.”
“Promising” for broader healing
International AIDS Society President Sharon Lewin said researchers are hesitant to use the word “cure” because it is unclear how long they need to follow such cases.
But more than five years of remission means the man “would be close” to being considered cured, she said at a news conference.
There is an important difference between this man’s case and that of other HIV patients who have achieved long-term remission, she said.
All but one of the other patients received stem cells from donors with a rare mutation in which part of the CCR5 gene was missing, preventing HIV from entering the body’s cells.
These donors inherited two copies of the mutant CCR5 gene – one from each parent – making them “essentially immune” to HIV, Lewin said.
But the new Berlin patient is the first to receive stem cells from a donor who inherited just one copy of the mutated gene.
About 15% of people of European origin have one mutated copy, compared with 1% for both.
Researchers hope the latest success means there will be a much larger pool of potential donors in the future.
The new case is also “promising” for the broader search for an HIV cure that works for all patients, Lewin said.
This is “because it suggests that you don’t actually need to get rid of every piece of CCR5 for gene therapy to work,” she added.
The Geneva patient, whose case was announced at last year’s AIDS conference, is the other exception among the seven. He received a transplant from a donor without any CCR5 mutations – but still achieved long-term remission.
This showed that the effectiveness of the procedure was not just due to the CCR5 gene, Lewin said.
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