Second HIV Patient Worldwide To Be Cured After Stem Cell Therapy

How the therapy was successful and why the treatment is still out of question for most of the patients.

The Berlin patient

Since 2007, the British patient Timothy Ray Brown was the only HIV patient in the world who could be cured. He had tested positive for the HI virus in 1995, and in 2006 he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

When conventional treatment failed, Brown received a stem cell donation to help rebuild his immune system.

As a result, the following year, there was suddenly no more HI-virus detectable in his body.

The stem cell donor was a carrier of the rare gene mutation Delta 32, which made him immune to HIV.

Apparently, the immunity had transferred from the donor to the recipient and defeated the virus. Since then, six other patients are said to have recovered after first receiving chemotherapy and then a stem cell donation. However, these cases are not generally recognized and officially confirmed.

There has also been a dispute among scientists for years as to whether Brown can actually be considered cured. In subsequent blood tests, some researchers found traces of HIV DNA in Brown’s body, while other doctors were unable to confirm these findings.

To this day, Timothy Ray Brown was still the only confirmed case for a complete cure for HIV.

Adam Castillejo, the second HIV patient, ever cured

It has now been confirmed what was first announced in 2019: Another person is completely HIV-free after chemotherapy, followed by stem cell donation.

Adam Castillejo, who was born in Venezuela and lived in London, was unfortunately also diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma after his HIV diagnosis. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is an aggressive form of lymph gland cancer.

To renew and strengthen his immune system, Castillejo received a stem cell donation in addition to his chemotherapy.

Castillejo’s donor was also a carrier of the Delta 32 mutation, as had been the case with the Berlin patient, years before.

The breakthrough was announced by Ravindra Gupta and his team from the University of Cambridge on 10.03.2020 in the journal The Lancet HIV.

According to Gupta, after completion of stem cell therapy in 2016, no functional virus can be detected even today. Only fragments of viral DNA can still be found in the patient’s body.

However, according to medical experts, these fragments do not belong to a functional virus.

A glimmer of hope, but no therapy for every patient

In the Berlin patient and Adam Castillejo, the combination of chemotherapy and the stem cell donation of a donor with the gene mutation Delta 32 led to a cure.

But there are other cases in which patients were also treated according to this pattern but without success.

One of these unsuccessfully treated patients also initially seemed virus-free, but then suffered a relapse. The reason for the relapse was a mutated viral strain that stem cell therapy was unable to stop.

The problem is that a cell can be attacked several times. New infection with mutated strains that are already in the body is then possible.

The biggest obstacle to the widespread use of stem cell donation, however, is that the recipient’s immune system must be almost completely switched off before the donation is made.

In cancer patients, this is a side effect of chemotherapy and, therefore, unavoidable. However, no doctor would expect HIV patients who are not suffering from cancer to undergo such a highly dangerous procedure.

The immune system of HIV-patients is weakened anyway. An artificial, further reduction of the immune defense would not be justifiable.

Therefore, research is currently underway to generate homozygous Δ32/Δ32 genotypes in the laboratory. These could then be introduced into the cells using CRISPR/Cas9, for example.

But these potentially safe methods do not yet exist. It is to be hoped that research will make rapid progress in this direction so that it will soon be possible to help the other millions of people affected.

Sources:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhiv/article/PIIS2352-3018(20)30069-2/fulltext

Do you want more of this?

Receive weekly emails, and don’t miss any of my articles.

subscribe here http://bit.ly/ReneJunge

Read also: