Immunity Gene Cures Man Of AIDS

[Modern_Matthew]

Source: CBS San Francisco

A 45-year-old man now living in the Bay Area may be the first person ever cured of the deadly disease AIDS, the result of the discovery of an apparent HIV immunity gene.

Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a “functional cure.”

Read more: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/05/16/apparent-immunity-gene-cures-bay-area-man-of-aids/

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This is a great leap forward.

[Omaha Steve]

1. K&R!

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[JTFrog]

3. Amazing. K&R

[Ian David]

4. I've seen how this movie ends...

He bleeds to death in a fountain with a spear through his chest.

[Kurmudgeon]

5. Sounds great! Hope this finally puts an end to this scourge. n/m

[Yo_Mama]

8. No chance of that

This is still the same case. The man was in Germany. He had leukemia that was unresponsive to normal treatments. The doctors decided to go the kill-the-bone-marrow-and-use-donor marrow route. They knew the guy had HIV and searched for matching donor with the resistance gene, and lo and behold, they were lucky enough to find one. Then the man was lucky enough to survive the process, which many don't. It is a dire treatment that has much higher fatality rates than HIV, so it is not as if you would want to do this to people with HIV.

A lot of people don't survive this leukemia treatment. Thus, it is hardly a general cure although this guy was so unlucky he finally got lucky.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041129112109.htm

[crim son]

9. There is no other way to introduce the resistant gene? n/t

[laconicsax]

14. Gene therapy, but it's no guarantee.

IIRC, using retroviral vectors is the most successful method. It's far from a guaranteed method and it could end up separate problems, especially if the retrovirus inserts itself into the genome in the middle of a regulatory gene.

[crim son]

19. Yes, I knew I remembered something like that.

Thanks.

[Yo_Mama]

20. No, not exactly

If there were, it would be a different story. Also there are now different strains of HIV that use different proteins for entry. This man is probably now immune (or at least greatly resistant) to the HIV strains that use CCR5 to get into the cell. But there is another family that uses CXCR4, and so if this guy were to be exposed to enough HIV carriers, the odds are high that he would get infected with that strain.

Here's some background info:
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2005/01/66198

Other genes:
http://www.eyeondna.com/2007/07/20/hiv-resistance-genes/
http://www.eyeondna.com/2007/06/18/hivmirror-dna-test-for-people-with-hiv/

There are early trials underway to try to use gene modification to establish a resistant line of cells in HIV carriers:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/03/03/gene-therapy-for-hiv-resistance-succeeds-in-trials%E2%80%94but-hold-the-cure-talk/

There is a lot of study on natural resistance, because the theory is that this should give us a clue about potential treatments. The problem is that suppose we succeed with the gene therapy approach and develop a way to modify some of the blood marrow cell lines of all HIV gene carriers. This would help a lot of people at first, but within a decade or so, what would happen is that most of the new HIV cases out there would be the CXCR4 strain, so the resistance would vanish.

Condoms are always going to be very important to address HIV.

More info about CXCR4:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/726458

However, knowing exactly how the HIV strain gets into the cell is very useful for finding medicines. It is way easier to treat people who have the CCR5 variant, because that is less important for immune function. If you fool around with CXCR4 gene very much, you might make people very sick. However the tests and research done on CXCR4 so far have suggested potential treatments for other diseases, especially involving auto-immune function.

Now the above relates more to HIV-1.

HIV-2 uses CCR5, but it also uses receptors GPR15 and CXCR6:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544080/

HIV-2 is much less studied at the current time. The above article also includes some information about the CXCR4 tropic version of HIV-1, which is thought to evolve naturally in many persons who have long term HIV-1 infection (and when it does, progression to AIDS seems to be more rapid).

There are some other "new" strains of HIV out there that have not been adequately studied at all.

[truedelphi]

43. Thank you for all the information.

And all the links, too.

[SoapBox]

6. We can only hope...

And then the insurance industry won't cover the treatment.

[boppers]

7. Considering giving somebody cancer is part of it, yeah....

He had HIV *and* leukemia, so they basically took him to the brink of death, and gave him a bone marrow transplant.

[TheWraith]

16. I'm not sure that the cancer is a required part of the procedure.

Yes, that's the way THIS guy's case went, because he already had cancer; however, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to execute a bone marrow transplant on an otherwise healthy HIV positive person.

That said, it's still insanely risky and with very bad odds.

[boppers]

35. Well, the marrow was to replace the destroyed marrow and immune system.

I suppose that actually giving them cancer could be skipped, if we just went straight to destroying the entire immune system, before providing a transplant? Maybe doing this under *incredibly* sterile conditions (reducing the need for an immune system) could improve the odds.

That being said, the judgement/ethical calls on such a thing are kind of insane.

[TheWraith]

47. The odds would indeed be better for a healty person in this situation.

But still extremely bad. And yes, it would necessitate destroying the existing marrow before you knew whether the new stuff would take.

[Yo_Mama]

46. Very bad odds

An otherwise healthy person with HIV has a much, much better chance with standard therapies.

The early trials on producing mutated cell lines for reinjection into persons with HIV who have low T-cell counts are too early to judge, but show perhaps some potential promise. It's worth following up.

But the above method will always kill too many people to be used as an HIV cure, and in any case, it isn't a cure that would serve to prevent infection with other HIV lines.

[obxhead]

10. Awesome!

[LeftofU]

11. Didn't William Gibson predict this in

his book virtual light?

[kedrys]

28. Sort of - he predicted that someone in the population would have natural immunity

to the AIDS virus. Statistically, this is nearly a certainty - someone out there is naturally resistant. If everyone had been susceptible to the black plague, chances are we wouldn't be here.

[Randy_P]

12. Rec'd

But let's wait and see. A friend of mine who was gay got very excited about a "cure" in 1997. Like I said, he was gay. :(

[xfundy]

15. "WAS gay?"

Go on...

[TheWraith]

17. As in, "was gay when he was alive." nt

[Lone_Star_Dem]

18. That was how I read it as well.

They were speaking of their friend in a past tense. :(

[Alameda]

21. That's how I read it too.

[EFerrari]

40. My nephew died of AIDS in 1983.

Hard to believe it's been nearly thirty years.

[sakabatou]

13. I'd want to see a study of this

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Taverner]

23. "We came, we saw, WE KICKED IT'S ASS!!!"

! ! !

[derby378]

24. Wasn't there another AIDS cure announced a few months ago?

Whatever became of that one?

That said, I'm extremely happy for this guy.

[cullen7282]

29. This is probably the same one you're thinking of

This isn't a new story. I heard about this guy quite awhile ago.

[boppers]

34. Yeah, he's been in the Headlines a few times.

Normally, though, he's anonymous, this is the first one I've seen where his name and current location are disclosed.

[Recursion]

44. Yes, this same one (nt)

[LetTimmySmoke]

25. K&R!!

[Zorra]

26. That is truly wonderful!

:bounce:

[bluedigger]

27. "Not it!"

Like that? :shrug:

[craigmatic]

30. This...is...awesome.

[tavalon]

31. May this be the first step to removing that scourge from the earth.

[Lost-in-FL]

32. Wonderful!!! nt

[Lucky Luciano]

33. Someone please explain to the teabaggers that this is more or less how evolution works. nt

[Generic Other]

36. wonderful news to hear

please let it lead to cures.

[dougpull260]

37. About time..

Good post!!:)

[McCamy Taylor]

38. $250 Billion. The cost of stem cell transplants for every HIV positive American.

Let's see Congress fit that in their budget.

[October]

39. Great "news" indeed. Why was this ignored by msm in December?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/14/hiv-cure-berlin-patient_n_796521.html

I saw this in mid-December.

[Recursion]

45. It was in Newsweek and Time IIRC

Hard to get more MSM than that

[October]

48. Thanks... chagrined here.

I guess I meant -- at the level of, say, the Royal Wedding...


I've shared this with many friends since December.

[Recursion]

49. It's also not clear how applicable it could be widely

It relies on

A) a bone marrow transplant (which was shown way back in the 90s to essentially remove viral load)
B) a particular gene being present (which changed that "essentially" to "entirely")

It's the A) part of things that's so problematic; bone marrow transplants are much more dangerous than properly-treated HIV/AIDS.

[October]

50. I see. And thank you for the explanation.

Interestingly, I know someone who died after a bone marrow transplant -- and one of my dear friends is HIV-positive and doing well.

[Recursion]

51. The bone marrow study came out like a month before the ARV "cocktail" study

So it basically got dropped as far as I know; before that we were dealing with single-drug regimens (often dosed higher than turned out to be necessary) which were basically as dangerous as AIDS itself -- the pallor and wasting we think of as AIDS symptoms are usually from the early drugs used.

[lonestarnot]

41. Wow! That is way more than fantastic!

K & R!

[bitchkitty]

42. This is wonderful -

anyone being cured of an incurable disease is wonderful. But I'm not sure anyone realizes what the cost to this man will be. This is not a cure for all those afflicted with AIDS.