HIV Patient in Germany Announced Virus-Free After Stem Cell Transplant

A new patient in Germany has been announced free of HIV after receiving a stem-cell transplant. Nature has the news.

The man is at least the seventh person with HIV to be announced virus-free after a stem-cell transplant, but he is “only the second person to receive stem cells that are not resistant to the virus.” Previously, a receptor called CCR5 was seen as “the best target for an HIV cure,” but this case “turns that on its head,” as the stem cells “only had one copy of the mutated gene, which means their cells do express CCR5, but at lower levels than usual.”

These findings “widen the donor pool for stem-cell transplants, a risky procedure offered to people with leukemia but unlikely to be rolled out for most individuals with HIV. Roughly 1% of people of European descent carry mutations in both copies of the CCR5 gene, but some 10% of people with such ancestry have one mutated copy.”

The patient in this story developed acute myeloid leukemia in 2015, and his doctors could not find “a matching stem-cell donor who had mutations in both copies of the CCR5 gene,” as he was also HIV positive. However, once they found a donor with one mutated copy, they performed the procedure. In 2018, he “stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, which suppress HIV,” and now, nearly six years later, “researchers can’t find evidence of HIV replicating in the patient.”

Other attempts from donors “with regular CCR5 genes have seen the virus reappear weeks to months after the people with HIV stopped taking antiretroviral therapy, in all but one person.”