Xinhua News Agency, Geneva, September 30 (Reporter Liu Qu) The International AIDS Association issued a statement on the 30th that Timothy Brown, the world's first cured AIDS patient known as the "Berlin patient", has died of cancer recurrence.

  Adiba Kamaruzaman, President of the International AIDS Association, said: "We are very grateful to Timothy and his doctor Gro Hüter for opening the door for scientists to explore the concept that AIDS can be cured."

  According to media reports, Brown has been fighting with relapsed leukemia for several months and received hospice care at his home in Palm Springs, California.

  Brown, an American born in 1966, is recognized as the world's first AIDS patient to be cured.

He was diagnosed with AIDS while living in Berlin, Germany in 1995, and was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2006.

Brown received radiotherapy and stem cell transplantation in Berlin in 2007, after which AIDS and leukemia disappeared.

  Brown stopped AIDS antiretroviral treatment shortly after transplanting the stem cells, and no detectable HIV was found in his body.

In other words, he was cured.

Brown’s experience shows that AIDS can one day be cured.

This has promoted a series of efforts dedicated to research on AIDS treatment.

  More than ten years after Brown was cured, Adam Castillejo, an AIDS patient known as the "London patient", was treated with stem cell transplantation. He was not tested for active HIV during a long observation period. It is widely regarded as the second AIDS patient cured.

  One thing the two patients had in common was that the CCR5 receptor of the stem cell donor had a rare mutation that made the body resistant to HIV, preventing it from entering the host cell.

CCR5 is a major entry point for HIV to attack the human body.

Researchers believe that the replacement of immune cells with cells without CCR5 receptors through stem cell transplantation may be the reason why the HIV does not rebound in patients after stopping treatment.

  Experts say that although Brown and Castillejo’s treatment method is not a viable strategy to cure AIDS on a large scale, it represents the direction of finding a cure for AIDS.