For the third time in the history of HIV, a new patient has just recovered. This time, it was thanks to a new method of umbilical cord blood transplantation that this patient, who also suffered from leukemia, was cured of AIDS, doctors announced at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Diseases.
After the patients in Berlin in 2011 and London in 2020 this time it was a woman of mixed origin who was declared in complete remission, we learn. via Reuters. The first two patients had received a bone marrow transplant and genetically modified stem cells to block the implantation of HIV in their body. This patient, meanwhile, received stem cells from umbilical cord blood to treat her leukemia.
A cure for cancer and HIV
The woman, dubbed the New York Patient, as she is being followed at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. She was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and leukemia in 2017. Its innovative treatment is encouraging because cord blood is much easier to obtain than the adult stem cells used in bone marrow transplants. In this case, the donor does not have to be so closely matched with the recipient, which offers hope for the treatment of dozens of people with both HIV and cancer.
But it remains a risky or even fatal treatment for patients who do not have cancer. “We estimate that there are approximately 50 patients per year in the United States who could benefit from this procedure,” said Dr. Koen van Besien of the Weill Cornell Stem Cell Transplant Program, about the use of haplo-cord grafting as a cure for HIV.
Sources:
A cure for HIV: how would we know?The Lancet, May 2020
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