For the third time, scientists have managed to cure a person of HIV.

As in the two cases before, the case that has now become known was also very special: the 60-year-old woman was also suffering from leukemia.

As researchers led by Yvonne Bryson from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of Los Angeles now reported, she received a stem cell transplant in June 2013.

This came from a donor who is immune to HIV thanks to a rare mutation in the CCR5 gene (CCR5-Delta 32).

Peter Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the department "Germany and the World".

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What is special in this case: The woman is Afro-American, but the mutation occurs mainly in people from northern Europe, which makes transmission to non-whites hardly possible.

The scientists from California therefore used umbilical cord blood.

It is rich in stem cells, which are easier to transplant than adult blood donors.

No HIV detected after 14 months

Since 2017, the patient has stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, which she used to keep the HI virus in check.

According to the doctors treating her, after 14 months, HIV could no longer be detected in her body.

In addition, the woman is said to have been cured of her blood cancer thanks to stem cell therapy.

The blood of the umbilical cord contains an unusually large number of stem cells because blood formation only migrates from the liver and spleen to the bone marrow via the child's bloodstream in the last trimester of pregnancy.

This opens up new opportunities for HIV research, and the group of patients who are eligible for such special treatment has been expanded to around 50 people.

The first patient to be cured in this way with a stem cell transplant was the American Timothy Ray Brown in 2007.

He went down in medical history as the “Berlin patient” because the man, who was born in Seattle, Washington state in 1966, had lived in Berlin since 1995.

His HIV infection was diagnosed there in the same year.

For eleven years he was then treated with antiretroviral drugs.

Then he was diagnosed with blood cancer.

At the Berlin Charité he was initially treated conventionally by the haematologist Gero Hütter.

After that, the doctor opted for a stem cell transplant with bone marrow that had an altered CCR5 gene.

For years he was then considered cured of HIV and leukemia.

In 2020, however, it became known that the fifty-four-year-old had contracted leukemia again.

He died of cancer in California in September 2020.

Adam Castillejo, a 40-year-old Venezuelan living in London, is thought to be the second case.

After that there were reports of further healings, which have not yet been officially confirmed.