In Düsseldorf, Germany, a 53-year-old man with HIV and cancer received a bone marrow transplant several years ago from a donor whose cells have a natural mutation that makes them HIV resistant. Researchers have just announce that the man who received the transplant is cured of HIV. He is the most recent of a few people who have been considered to be cured following similar treatment. From CBS News:
Recent studies have shown promising results for two other patients. A patient at City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California, has been in remission for HIV since 2019 after receiving a stem cell transplant to treat acute myelogenous leukemia, according to an announcement published in the American Journal of Managed Care in 2022. Weill Cornell Medicine in New York announced last year an HIV patient appeared free of the virus after a cell transplant to treat the same type of cancer.
According to Nature Medicine, this treatment will likely not be used in HIV patients who don't also have leukemia. Scientists are testing what would happen if a patient's own stem cells were modified to have the mutation needed to block HIV, which would mean they would not need a donor.
