A new milestone in the war against HIV that affects 37 million people around the world.
A team of American researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles has revealed at a conference held this week in Denver, Colorado (USA) that a New Yorker with leukemia is the first woman and the third person in the world to be cured of HIV , after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus, as reported by several US media.
For the first time in history, a woman has been cured of HIV
The middle-aged, mixed-race woman was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and leukemia in 2017. She has beaten the virus using a novel transplant method that involves umbilical cord blood from a donor who was a partial match to treat her condition. myeloid leukemia, which is a type of cancer that begins in the blood-forming cells in the bone marrow, as well as HIV, scientists said at the virtual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. In this case, the umbilical cord blood came from an unrelated newborn, but was genetically compatible with the patient and also had the rare CCR5-delta32/32 mutation that makes the cells resistant to HIV infection. This mutation is hardly present in the population.
“Grafts from adult donors initially provide many cells and fast engraftment, but histocompatibility can be an issue leading to the risk of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Umbilical cord blood grafts have a lower cell dose and take longer to engraft, but can be banked for immediate availability and pose less risk of graft-versus-host disease. With the combination, the adult graft provides accelerated engraftment until the cord graft takes over,” Yvonne Bryson, a specialist in HIV pathogenesis at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, explained in a statement.
Similarly, the “New York patient” also received adult stem cells and was taking antiretroviral drugs, a common treatment for people with HIV that reduces their viral load to undetectable levels. After receiving the stem cell transplant, the woman came off antiretrovirals; however, virus levels did not recover and remained undetectable for 14 months afterwards, which appears to show that the virus is in remission. Neither HIV nor cancer samples have been registered. And it has already been four years since the treatment was started (the HIV procedure was stopped in October 2020).
This could be a breakthrough , as the new stem cell transplant method can be given to dozens of people each year, potentially ushering in a new era for the global HIV epidemic.
The head of the infectious diseases unit at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian, Marshall Glesby, assured in statements collected by ‘The Wall Street Journal’ that the result is “very promising.”
An HIV-resistant stem cell transplant and antiretroviral therapy
This combination by means of a haploidentical cord transplant using the blood of the umbilical cord and the bone marrow of the donor has been successful, according to the experts. Cord blood helps fight blood cancers, such as the woman’s leukemia, while bone marrow provides stem cells to the body.
Patient gender is significant, as women make up more than half of people living with HIV worldwide, but only 11% of participants in cure trials.
Yes indeed. While the case could pave the way to curing more people of HIV, the treatment is risky and extremely difficult to scale up, as this stem cell treatment can result in patient death quite often, experts they will not use it in a healthy person who is able to control HIV through the usual methods.
According to the researchers, this treatment would be indicated for people in the later stages of a cancer diagnosis who are likely to die anyway unless major medical intervention is performed.
Referencia: The Wall Street Journal / UCLA HEALTH (uclahealth.org/news/ucla-health-croi-presenting-case-woman-with-hiv-1-remission)
