First cases of HIV cure involved stem cell transplantation

The case of a cure for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) announced on Wednesday afternoon (27) is the fourth reported in the world. Two men – an American and an Englishman – and a woman have also been cleared of the virus that can lead to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).

The first person cured was Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the “Berlin patient”. Born in the United States, he was diagnosed with HIV in 1995 while living in Germany, and in 2006 he was diagnosed with leukemia.

In 2007 and 2008, Brown received two bone marrow stem cell transplants from a donor with a mutation in the CCR5 gene that prevents HIV from entering cells. A few months after the treatment, there were no longer any traces of the virus in her body.

“After the transplant, I felt great and knew that clinically my viral load was undetectable. Dr. Gero Hütter, the doctor who performed the procedure that led to my cure, sent a report of my case to New England Journal of Medicine, but the article was rejected. So I thought there must be a reason for this, that maybe I wasn’t cured. But some time later they accepted, and the article was published. So I believed,” revealed the activist in 2019, in an interview with Sheet.

At the time, Brown also stated that he didn’t want to be the only one cured and that he was happy to have “new brothers” in the family, a reference to the then recent announcement of the second patient free of the virus. He passed away in September 2020 from leukemia.

The second man cured, Adam Castillejo, became known as the “London patient”. He had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and received a bone marrow transplant from a donor with the CCR5 mutation in May 2016. In September 2017, Castillejo stopped taking anti-HIV drugs and his subsequent blood tests showed no signs of the virus.

More recently, in February of this year, researchers announced the third case of a cure, this time involving a woman undergoing a different treatment. The patient, who like Brown had leukemia, was seen at Weill Medical College in New York and received umbilical cord stem cells to treat her cancer.

The woman had been living with HIV since June 2013 and discovered the cancer in March 2017. In June of the same year, she received umbilical cord blood from a donor with the CCR5 mutation and partially compatible blood stem cells from a relative of first degree.

The procedure was a success and she was discharged in 17 days. The patient, whose name has not yet been made public, has suspended antiretroviral treatment and her tests no longer indicate the presence of the virus.