Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection used to be considered incurable since it "sleeps" in the genome of infected cells for a long while and makes it challenging to be accessed by the immune system and antiviral drugs.
But this time, a 53-year-old man from Düsseldorf in Germany has been completely cured of HIV after undergoing a successful stem cell transplant using donor cells with a specific genetic mutation.
This makes him the third person to be cured of the virus following a stem cell transplant.
Düsseldorf's History
In January 2008, the patient received an HIV-positive diagnosis. Six months after beginning HIV therapy at University Hospital, he was given the life-threatening blood cancer diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 2011. He then underwent a stem cell transplant in 2013 to treat his AML.
The Düsseldorf patient received stem cells from a healthy donor whose genome carries a mutation in the gene encoding the HIV-1 co-receptor CCR5, just like in the cases of the first two patients, "Berlin" and "London".
This mutation prevents most HI viruses from invading human CD4+ T-lymphocytes, which are the primary target cells.
The patient was closely watched virologically and immunologically for almost ten years after transplantation. The scientists examined the patient's blood and tissue samples using a range of delicate techniques to carefully monitor immunological reactions to HIV and the continuous presence and replication of the virus.
After transplantation and during the study years, the researchers did not find replicating viruses or reactive immune cells against HIV.
The HIV antiviral medication was stopped more than four years ago. But ten years after the transplantation and four years following the termination of anti-HIV therapy, the Düsseldorf patient was announced to be the third person to get completely cured of the virus.
What This Case Means
"This case of curing a chronic HIV infection by stem cell transplantation shows that HIV can in principle be cured," Prof. Julian Schulze zur Wiesch, DZIF scientist at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and one of the study's lead authors, said in a statement.
"In particular, the results of this study are also enormously important for further research into a cure for HIV for the vast majority of people living with HIV for whom stem cell transplantation is not an option."
The findings of this case is titled "In-depth virological and immunological characterization of HIV-1 cure after CCR5Δ32/Δ32 allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation" and it was further detailed in the journal Nature Medicine.
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