Can Bone Marrow Transplants Defeat HIV?
Researchers in Germany report that a 42-year-old HIV-positive American man treated with a bone marrow transplant for his leukemia has been able to maintain undetectable HIV viral loads for two years since the procedure without needing to take anti-HIV medications, The Wall Street Journal reports. The procedure — performed by German hematologist Gero Hutter of Berlin’s Charite Medical University — “is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease,” The Journal reports. Hutter replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor that carried a natural gene mutation that prevented the CCR5 molecule from appearing on the surface of CD4 cells. Most strains of HIV use this portal exclusively to latch onto and infect the cells. Without the portal, HIV is unable to penetrate the cells and make copies of itself. Because immune system cells are created in the bone marrow, “transplanting mutant bone marrow cells would
