2023-07-20 18:30:49
A patient is in remission from HIV in Geneva following a bone marrow transplant for the treatment of blood cancer. For the first time, stem cells did not carry a genetic mutation, which makes cells naturally resistant to the AIDS virus.
Only five people in the world are considered likely to be cured of infection with the AIDS virus after receiving a bone marrow transplant, the University Hospitals of Geneva said in a statement on Thursday.
For the other patients, remission was due to a transplant from specific donors carrying the rare CCR5 delta 32 genetic mutation, known to make cells naturally resistant to HIV.
The particularity of the patient followed at the HUG, in collaboration in particular with the Pasteur Institute in France, lies in the fact that the transplant comes from stem cells which did not contain this protective mutation.
Treatment stopped in 2021
The patient has been living with HIV since the early 1990s and has always been on antiretroviral therapy. In 2018, to treat a particularly aggressive form of leukemia, he underwent a stem cell transplant.
One month after the transplant, tests showed that the patient’s blood cells had been completely replaced by donor cells. These results were accompanied by a drastic decrease in HIV-carrying cells.
The antiretroviral treatment was gradually reduced and definitively stopped in November 2021. The analyzes carried out since the treatment was stopped have detected neither viral particles, nor an activatable viral reservoir, nor an increase in immune responses against the virus in the patient’s body.
>> Interview with Alexandra Calmy, head of the HIV/AIDS unit at HUG, in La Matinale:
A Geneva patient becomes the 6th person in the world in remission from the AIDS virus: interview with Alexandra Calmy / The Hourly Journal / 1 min. / today at 09:02
“Magnificent, magical”
These elements do not exclude that the virus still persists in the body, but they allow the scientific team to consider this patient as a case of remission of the HIV infection. “What is happening to me is magnificent, magical, we are looking to the future”, specifies the patient, quoted in the press release.
“We are exploring new avenues with this unique situation in the hope that remission, or even the cure of HIV, is no longer an exceptional event”, explains Alexandra Calmy, head of the HIV/AIDS unit at HUG.
“We will be able to explore territories that seemed impossible to us and to offer certain people, perhaps not 39 million, possibilities of remission”, rejoices the Geneva professor in the 7:30 p.m.
>> See the interview with Alexandra Calmy in 7:30 p.m.: A patient with AIDS is cured, explanations by Alexandra Calmy, head of the HIV unit at HUG / 7:30 p.m. / 2 min. / today at 7:30 p.m.
“Although this protocol cannot be transposed on a large scale because of its aggressiveness, this new case provides unexpected information on the mechanisms of elimination and control of viral reservoirs, which will be important for the development of curative treatments for HIV”, concludes Asier Sáez-Cirión, head of the Viral Reservoirs and Immune Control Unit at the Institut Pasteur.
>> The interview in the 12:30 p.m. with Matthias Cavassini, doctor responsible for the consultation of infectious diseases at the CHUV:
A Geneva patient in remission from AIDS following a bone marrow transplant: interview with Matthias Cavassini / Le 12h30 / 1 min. / today at 12:38
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