A Cure for HIV/AIDS?
According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, a patient with both AIDS and leukemia, who underwent a bone marrow transplant two years ago, now appears to be completely free of the HIV virus. The cell donor had a rare mutation found in 1% of Europeans that creates HIV-resistant cells.
From The Wall Street Journal:
A Doctor, a Mutation and a Potential Cure for AIDS
By Mark Schoofs
The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.
The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.
I was very surprised, said the doctor, Gero Htter.
The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Htter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isnt an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patients bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The development suggests a potential new therapeutic avenue and comes as the search for a cure has adopted new urgency. Many fear that current AIDS drugs arent sustainable. Known as antiretrovirals, the medications prevent the virus from replicating but must be taken every day for life and are expensive for poor countries where the disease runs rampant. Last year, AIDS killed two million people; 2.7 million more contracted the virus, so treatment costs will keep ballooning.
While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke, David Baltimore, who won a Nobel prize for his research on tumor viruses, deemed it a very good sign and a virtual proof of principle for gene-therapy approaches. Dr. Baltimore and his colleague, University of California at Los Angeles researcher Irvin Chen, have developed a gene therapy strategy against HIV that works in a similar way to the Berlin case. Drs. Baltimore and Chen have formed a private company to develop the therapy.
While offering some hope, the article cites many caveats including the high risk nature of bone marrow transplantation, which can be fatal in 30% of patients.
Here is the WSJ article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html