Another HIV patient has been cured after undergoing a risky stem cell transplant, researchers declared today.
The 53-year-old — known by scientists as the Dusseldorf Patient — is just the third person to be cleared of the AIDS-causing virus by the experimental treatment that simultaneously rids the patient of cancer.
The unidentified man has been off anti-retroviral drugs — tablets usually required daily to keep the virus at bay — for four years without relapse, doctors said.
His case follows two other patients who’ve been in long-term remission after going through the dangerous procedure, the ‘Berlin‘ and the ‘London Patient’. Both also had the procedure to ward off blood cancer.
Almost a decade after the stem cell transplant from an unrelated donor, and more than four years after ending HIV therapy, the so-called Dusseldorf Patient is now in good health, according to medics who treated him.
‘Berlin Patient’ Timothy Ray Brown was successfully cured of the HIV virus 16 years ago
The man, who was diagnosed in 2008, said: ‘I still remember very well the sentence of my family doctor: “Don’t take it so hard. We will experience together that HIV can be cured.”
‘At the time, I dismissed the statement as an alibi.
‘Today, I am all the more proud of my worldwide team of doctors who succeeded in curing me of HIV — and at the same time, of course, of leukaemia.
‘On Valentine’s Day this year, I celebrated the 10th anniversary of my bone marrow transplant in a big way. My bone marrow donor was present as a guest of honour.’
The man said he had decided to dedicate some of his time to supporting fundraising for HIV research and fight the stigmatisation of the virus with his story.
The Dusseldorf Patient was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in January 2011, six months after being diagnosed with HIV.
It is the most common type of leukaemia among adults, with around 3,000 Brits and 20,000 Americans diagnosed each year.
It is also the deadliest, claiming 2,700 lives in the UK and 11,000 in the US annually.
The patient underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in February 2013, overseen by an international research team, headed by medics at Dusseldorf University Hospital.
It involved destroying the Dusseldorf Patient’s unhealthy blood cells and replenishing them with those from a donor — who had a mutation in their CCR5 gene that made them resistant to a HIV infection.
The man then underwent chemotherapy and received infusions of donor lymphocytes, which are immune cells that can kill remaining cancer cells.
Following the stem cell transplant, the Dusseldorf Patient continued to take anti-retroviral therapy, which stop the virus replicating in the body.
However, HIV was undetectable in his blood, so he stopped taking the daily tablets in November 2018 — six years on from the stem cell transplant.
He was kept under close monitoring by the team of doctors for four further years.
Details of the case, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine, show that there was no HIV resurgence or a boosting of the immune response to the virus — which would have suggested that the virus was still present in his body.
This allowed the team of medics to declare that the Dusseldorf Patient was in remission from HIV.
They said the case provides ‘strong evidence’ that the transplant cured him of the virus.
However, the high-risk treatment will never be available to all 38million people living with HIV worldwide, as it is primarily a cancer treatment.
There is a chance that transplanted cells recognise the patient’s cells as ‘foreign’ and attack them — a life threatening reaction called graft versus host disease.
And drugs mean those living with the virus can live a near-normal life.
Adam Castillejo, 40, was the second person in the world to be cured of HIV. Earlier this year he revealed he was the ‘London patient’
The medical team said their report is the longest and most precise diagnostic monitoring of a patient with HIV after stem cell transplantation.
They hope the case will provide starting points for planning future studies into cures for HIV.
Experts suggest research must now be continued to allow patients to overcome HIV infections without the need for this strenuous intervention in the future.
Who are the patients that have been cured of HIV?
The Berlin Patient (Timothy Ray Brown) in 2011
The London Patient (Adam Castillejo) in 2020
The Dusseldorf Patient (man, name not known) in 2023
The New York Patient (woman, name not known) in 2022
The Esperanza Patient (woman, name not known) in 2021
Loreen Willenberg in 2020
Unlike the other patients, in the cases of the Esperanza Patient and Ms Willenberg, their immune systems naturally rid the virus from their bodies
On behalf of the international team, Dr Bjorn-Erik Ole Jensen said: ‘Following our intensive research, we can now confirm that it is fundamentally possible to prevent the replication of HIV on a sustainable basis by combining two key methods.
‘On the one hand, we have the extensive depletion of the virus reservoir in long-lived immune cells, and on the other hand, the transfer of HIV resistance from the donor immune system to the recipient, ensuring that the virus has no chance to spread again.
‘Further research is now needed into how this can be made possible outside the narrow set of framework conditions we have described.’
It comes more than a decade after a similar approach was used to cure the Berlin Patient, Timothy Ray Brown, of HIV.
Mr Brown, from Seattle, Washington, was diagnosed with HIV while living in the German capital in 1995.
After developing acute myeloid leukaemia in 2007, he was given a bone marrow transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV.
Like the Dusseldorf patient, he was then able to stop taking anti-retroviral tablets.
Mr Brown remained clear of HIV for the rest of his life, though he died from cancer in 2020 after his leukaemia returned and spread to his brain and spinal cord.
That same year, the London Patient, Adam Castillejo, underwent a similar treatment which rid him of HIV.
In November, doctors confirmed that an unidentified 30-year-old woman from Argentina no longer had HIV and is thought to have naturally rid her body of the virus.
And a woman dubbed the ‘New York Patient’ by scientists at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center was last month revealed to have defeated the virus after receiving a stem-cell treatment.
WHY HIV IS SO HARD TO CURE
In 1995, researchers discovered why HIV manages to come back even when it seems to have been defeated.
The virus buries part of itself in latent reservoirs of the body, lying dormant as ‘back-up’.
In 1996, it was discovered that anti-retroviral therapy (ART) could suppress the virus, and prevent it from resurging, if the medication was taken religiously.
But once that blanket is lifted, the virus swiftly rebuilds itself.
Despite decades of attempts, we still don’t know how to get at those hidden parts of the virus.
The most promising approach may well be a ‘shock and kill’ technique – awakening the virus out of its hiding place then blitzing it.
But we don’t yet know how to wake it up without harming the patient.