The French institute said the patient was “probably cured” because more than five years following receiving the transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that is resistant to HIV infection – and forty-four months later having stopped antiretroviral drugs – the tests revealed no trace of the man’s previous infection. This patient had received the bone marrow stem cells as part of a treatment he was undergoing for leukemia in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“The donor’s immune cells will replace and destroy the HIV-carrying immune cells in this man”said Asier Saez-Cirion, co-author of the study on this case published in the journal Nature Medicine. With a precedent in 2007, nicknamed “the Berlin patient”, and another in 2016, “the London patient”, “the Düsseldorf patient” is the third case of HIV recovery by bone marrow transplant in the world.
Although the procedure is complex, expensive and risky, Mr Saez-Cirion believes it is an encouraging step in the search for a cure for HIV, which makes it possible to consider the introduction of the mutation. genetic resistance to HIV in patients without resorting to bone marrow transplantation.
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