Another CURE

By Jeff Taylor

We are lucky to have Jeff Taylor from HARP-Palm Springs, who participated in the panel discussion with 3 cured patients, and shares the following comments on the 2nd Berlin patient.

The “Towards a Truly Global HIV Cure” pre-conference workshop on Sunday, 21st featured a panel discussion with all three “out” people who have been cured of HIV. “Düsseldorf Patient” Marc Franke, “London Patient” Adam Castillejo, and “City of Hope Patient” Paul Edmonds joined a panel discussion chaired by IAS co-chair Sharon Lewin and Jeff Taylor. All three shared their amazing stories of receiving stem cell transplants that cured both their blood cancers and their HIV—the tribulations of the procedure, the challenges they still face living as transplant recipients, and the rather surreal experience of being cured, and the media attention, and how the media often distorts their stories.  All three agreed they had gone public hoping their stories would inspire researchers and people living with HIV to continue to fight for a cure for everyone.

 The audience of researchers & community advocates from around the world flocked to the stage afterwards to shake their hands, and of course take lots of selfies. All three gentlemen will be featured in other IAS sessions—especially around interrupting HIV treatment during cure trials, and in multiple media stories coming out of the conference. Both Adam Castillejo and Paul Edmonds will be in San Diego for a town hall meeting on cure research produced by the RID HIV cure research Collaboratory on Sunday, Oct 6. Stay tuned for more details…

ANOTHER CURE!!

Also announced at the conference was the latest person cured of HIV–“The New Berlin Patient”.  This 60-year-old man also received a stem cell transplant to treat his blood cancer, but with one key difference—the donor stem cells only had one, not two genes of the rare mutation in T-cells that makes them immune to HIV infection. People with these cells can acquire HIV, but typically are so-called “slow progressors” who don’t get as sick nearly as quickly as most people and can go a long time before they need to start on HIV treatment.  Session Abstract

This is the first case like this, so it’s unknown whether they could possibly become reinfected with HIV or not.

The 2nd Berlin Patient, has been cured of HIV. “The procedure used with the next Berlin Patient is yet another stem cell transplant and, thus, not a viable option for the vast majority of the nearly 40 million people living with HIV. But his case is unique in that, unlike most other successful stem cell transplant HIV cures, his donor has only one copy of the CCR5-delta32 mutation that renders a person almost completely immune to HIV, rather than two. It will require further study to determine to full ramifications of this case, but it could open the door to a cure for many more people who already require a stem cell transplant for the treatment of cancer; while only about 1% of people with northern European ancestry have two copies of the CCR5 mutation, as many as 16% have one copy.” 

The “Geneva Patient” announced at last year’s IAS conference in Brisbane received normal stem cells without that mutation, yet the transplant process appears to have eliminated HIV in their bodies anyway. Since these are the first cases like this, it’s unknown whether they could possibly become reinfected with HIV or not.  We have a lot more to learn…

Patients cured of HIV

  1. The second Berlin patient represents the seventh case of HIV to be cured worldwide, reported July 2024 at International AIDS Conference.
  2. Timothy Ray Brown (the “Berlin Patient,” publication date 2009),
  3. Adam Castillejo (the “London Patient,” publication date 2019),
  4. Marc Franke (the “Düsseldorf Patient,” publication date 2023),
  5. The “New York Patient” (publication date 2023) and
  6. Paul Edmonds (the “City of Hope Patient,” publication date 2023)
  7. “Geneva Patient,” who received a stem cell donation from a person with exclusively a functioning CCR5 receptor, was presented at the International AIDS Conference in 2023; because the follow-up observation period has been rather short, there are different assessments as to whether he has been fully cured of HIV.   Probably the 6th case cured.

2nd Berlin             2024

Berlin                   2009

London                2019

Düsseldorf         2023

New York            2023

City of Hope      2023

Geneva               2023

Jeff Taylor at conference, session on Metabolism and Inflammation in PLH