Stem cells send another HIV patient into remission: study

A patient who was treated for leukaemia with stem cell transplantation has also shown nine years of persistent suppression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), according to international researchers.

In a report published in Nature Medicine, the researchers said this patient could follow the famous ‘London patient’ and ‘Berlin patient’ who underwent similar treatments.

The 53-year-old male HIV patient was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in January 2011.

He received an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant for the cancer followed by chemotherapy and infusions of donor lymphocytes.

The patient was treated with bone marrow from a female donor with a mutation in the gene for the HIV-1 receptor CCR5, which makes cells resistant to HIV infection.

HIV became undetectable in the patient’s blood cells, so antiretroviral therapy was stopped — with the patient’s consent — in November 2018 to ascertain whether the infection would return.

The researchers did not observe a resurgence of HIV-1 RNA or a boosting of the immune response to HIV-1 proteins for the following four years and the patient was said to be in remission during that time.

While stem cell therapy is a high-risk procedure, the team said this case study adds to previous work that could one day allow HIV treatment and remission.

Dr Ioannis Jason Limnios, from the Clem Jones Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Bond University, said, “This study shows that transplanting blood stem cells from an HIV-resistant donor has led to the development of a new, HIV-resistant immune system in an HIV+ patient.

“By following the patient for a decade after transplantation, researchers have shown that their HIV-resistant immune system is stable and working well, and that the patient remains healthy after stopping antiviral therapy for four years.

“Over the past 10 years, stem cell and gene editing technologies (such as CRISPR) have advanced medical science to a point where we can now engineer stem cells for such therapies. Rather than harvesting stem cells from donors with rare and special genetics, they can be created in specialised facilities under highly controlled conditions, and in greater quantities,” Limnios said.

“This is important and exciting progress in the fight against AIDS; however, the researchers carefully state that HIV remains hidden in other tissues of the body. So, it’s not yet clear if this type of therapy is a life-long ‘cure’, and the risk of passing on HIV, whilst extremely low, will never be zero using this therapy alone.”

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