kabonk posted link to an article about an HIV patient who was cured after stem cell transplant. Here is another article which also discusses various details including the CCR5 mutation. Here are a few excerpts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/0...OI7j9NRaKQ
A 66-year-old man with HIV is in long-term remission after receiving a transplant of blood stem cells containing a rare mutation, raising the prospect that doctors may someday be able to use gene editing to re-create the mutation and cure patients of the virus that causes AIDS, a medical team announced Wednesday.
For now, the crucial virus-defeating mutation is rare, leaving the treatment unavailable to the vast majority of the 38 million patients living with HIV, including over 1.2 million in the United States. Bone marrow transplants also carry significant risk and have been used only on HIV patients who have developed cancer.
The patient, who had lived more than half his life with the virus, is among a handful of people who went into remission after receiving stem cells from a donor with the rare mutation, said doctors from City of Hope, a cancer and research center in Duarte, Calif., who treated him.
The patient received the transplant from an unrelated donor in 2019, after being diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. His doctor at City of Hope chose donor stem cells that had a genetic mutation found in about 1 in 100 people of northern European descent.
Those having the mutation, known as CCR5-delta 32, cannot be infected by HIV because it slams shut the doorway used by the virus to enter and attack the immune system. That doorway is the cell receptor CCR5, which the virus uses to enter white blood cells that form an important part of the body’s defense against disease.
Although the survival rate for bone marrow transplant recipients has risen significantly, 30 percent of the patients die within a year of the procedure.
The nonprofit National Marrow Donor Program now routinely screens donors to learn whether they have the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, said Joseph Alvarnas, a City of Hope hematologist-oncologist and a co-author of the abstract.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/0...OI7j9NRaKQ
A 66-year-old man with HIV is in long-term remission after receiving a transplant of blood stem cells containing a rare mutation, raising the prospect that doctors may someday be able to use gene editing to re-create the mutation and cure patients of the virus that causes AIDS, a medical team announced Wednesday.
For now, the crucial virus-defeating mutation is rare, leaving the treatment unavailable to the vast majority of the 38 million patients living with HIV, including over 1.2 million in the United States. Bone marrow transplants also carry significant risk and have been used only on HIV patients who have developed cancer.
The patient, who had lived more than half his life with the virus, is among a handful of people who went into remission after receiving stem cells from a donor with the rare mutation, said doctors from City of Hope, a cancer and research center in Duarte, Calif., who treated him.
The patient received the transplant from an unrelated donor in 2019, after being diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. His doctor at City of Hope chose donor stem cells that had a genetic mutation found in about 1 in 100 people of northern European descent.
Those having the mutation, known as CCR5-delta 32, cannot be infected by HIV because it slams shut the doorway used by the virus to enter and attack the immune system. That doorway is the cell receptor CCR5, which the virus uses to enter white blood cells that form an important part of the body’s defense against disease.
Although the survival rate for bone marrow transplant recipients has risen significantly, 30 percent of the patients die within a year of the procedure.
The nonprofit National Marrow Donor Program now routinely screens donors to learn whether they have the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, said Joseph Alvarnas, a City of Hope hematologist-oncologist and a co-author of the abstract.
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