2nd person cured of HIV thanks to stem cell transplant

He looked for a donor with a specific genetic mutation that made them practically immune to HIV.Receiving stem cells from this donor, it turned out, not only treated Mr. Brown’s leukemia but also cured the HIV infection.Now, as a study featuring in The Lancet shows, another person has officially been cured of HIV, also thanks to a stem cell transplant.In this second case, the person received a stem cell transplant with cells that did not express the CCR5 gene, which produces a protein that helps the virus enter cells.The cells without the CCR5 gene were part of a bone marrow transplant, which the person was undergoing as a treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma.Following the transplant, and at 30 months after the person ceased antiretroviral therapy, doctors confirmed that the HIV viral load remained undetectable in blood samples.This finding means that whatever traces of the virus’s genetic material might still be in the system, they are so-called fossil traces, meaning that they cannot lead to further replication of the virus.The specialists confirmed that HIV also remained undetectable in samples of cerebrospinal fluid, semen, intestinal tissue, and lymphoid tissue.“We propose that these results represent the second ever case of a patient to be cured of HIV,” says the study’s lead author, Prof.