Recently, a 66-year-old man with HIV entered long-term remission, similar to a handful of other patients, after he was treated with a transplant of blood stem cells containing a rare mutation that helped him to defend against the virus.
The mutation, known as CCR5-delta 32, protects the people that have it from being infected by HIV. This is because it blocks the doorway CCR5 that HIV uses to enter white blood cells and attack the immune system.
The virus-defeating mutation is rare, so it is unavailable to the majority of the 38 million patients with HIV. One day, doctors may be able to use gene editing to re-create the mutation and make it accessible to more patients.
“This is probably the fifth case in which this type of transplant appeared to cure someone. This approach clearly works. It’s curative and we know the mechanism,” said Steven Deeks, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who cared for the first such patient, Timothy Ray Brown. In 2007, Brown was cured by a medical team in Berlin using a transplant from someone who had the same mutation.
“This is one step in the long road to cure,” said William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor, who founded the university’s cancer and HIV/AIDS research departments.
Haseltine, now chairman and president of the nonprofit think tank Access Health International.
There have already been many “steps” made. There was federal approval for the use of the drug AZT in 1987, which uses protease inhibitors to reduce the virus in the body. Then in 2012, PrEP was approved, which prevents healthy people from being infected.
As a result of these developments, an HIV patient diagnosed around age 20 can receive antiretroviral therapy and live 54 more years. But when the virus was first discovered in 1981, it was much more different.
“When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence,” said the patient, who asked not to be identified, in a statement shared by the hospital. “I never thought I would live to see the day that I no longer have HIV.”
The mutation, known as CCR5-delta 32, protects the people that have it from being infected by HIV. This is because it blocks the doorway CCR5 that HIV uses to enter white blood cells and attack the immune system.
The virus-defeating mutation is rare, so it is unavailable to the majority of the 38 million patients with HIV. One day, doctors may be able to use gene editing to re-create the mutation and make it accessible to more patients.
“This is probably the fifth case in which this type of transplant appeared to cure someone. This approach clearly works. It’s curative and we know the mechanism,” said Steven Deeks, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who cared for the first such patient, Timothy Ray Brown. In 2007, Brown was cured by a medical team in Berlin using a transplant from someone who had the same mutation.
“This is one step in the long road to cure,” said William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor, who founded the university’s cancer and HIV/AIDS research departments.
Haseltine, now chairman and president of the nonprofit think tank Access Health International.
There have already been many “steps” made. There was federal approval for the use of the drug AZT in 1987, which uses protease inhibitors to reduce the virus in the body. Then in 2012, PrEP was approved, which prevents healthy people from being infected.
As a result of these developments, an HIV patient diagnosed around age 20 can receive antiretroviral therapy and live 54 more years. But when the virus was first discovered in 1981, it was much more different.
“When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence,” said the patient, who asked not to be identified, in a statement shared by the hospital. “I never thought I would live to see the day that I no longer have HIV.”
