Almost three years after he received stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection, highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man's previous HIV infection
People gather around candles in the shape of a ribbon during an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. Picture: REUTERS
"There is no virus there that we can measure. We can't detect anything," said Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist who co-led a team of doctors treating the man. The man is being called"the London patient", in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV - in a US man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany in 2007, which also cleared his HIV.
Gupta, now at Cambridge University, treated the London patient when he was working at University College London. The man had contracted HIV in 2003, Gupta said, and in 2012 was also diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called Hodgkin's Lymphoma.In 2016, when he was very sick with cancer, doctors decided to seek a transplant match for him.The donor — who was unrelated — had a genetic mutation known as CCR5 delta 32, which confers resistance to HIV.
"Although this is not a viable large-scale strategy for a cure, it does represent a critical moment," said Anton Pozniak, president of the International AIDS Society."The hope is that this will eventually lead to a safe, cost-effective and easy strategy … using gene technology or antibody techniques."
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