The “Düsseldorf patient,” a 53-year-old man, is now the third person in the world to be completely cured of the HI virus by a stem cell transplant.
- The patient, treated at the University Hospital Düsseldorf for his HIV infection, had received a stem cell transplant due to a blood cancer.
- The patient received stem cells from a healthy donor whose genome contains a mutation in the gene for the HIV-1 co-receptor CCR5 (a protein on the surface of certain immune system cells). This mutation makes it impossible for most HI viruses to enter human CD4+ T-lymphocytes, their major target cells.
- “This case of curing a chronic HIV infection by stem cell transplantation shows that HIV can in principle be cured,” says Prof. Julian Schulze zur Wiesch, DZIF scientist at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Why HIV is considered incurable?
- An infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was previously considered incurable.
- Because the virus sleeps in the genome of infected cells for long periods of time, making it invisible and inaccessible to both the immune system and antiviral drugs.
Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation
- Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are multipotent precursors that have self-renewal capacity and the ability to regenerate all of the different cell types that comprise the blood-forming system.
- Transplantation of HSCs forms the basis of consolidation therapy in cancer treatments and is used to cure or ameliorate a number of hematologic and genetic disorders.
(Science Daily)
