VIDEO: Did Marrow Transplant Cure AIDS?
Benefits from a mutation that protects about 1% of Europeans against HIV infection, may be transferred via a bone marrow transplant to AIDS patients. From the WSJ.com:
Back in 1996, when “cocktails” of antiretroviral drugs were proved effective, some researchers proposed that all cells harboring HIV might eventually die off, leading to eradication of HIV from the body — in short, a cure. Those hopes foundered on the discovery that HIV, which integrates itself into a patient’s own DNA, hides in so-called “sanctuary cells,” where it lies dormant yet remains capable of reigniting an infection.
But that same year, researchers discovered that some gay men astonishingly remained uninfected despite engaging in very risky sex with as many as hundreds of partners. These men had inherited a mutation from both their parents that made them virtually immune to HIV.
The mutation prevents a molecule called CCR5 from appearing on the surface of cells. CCR5 acts as a kind of door for the virus. Since most HIV strains must bind to CCR5 to enter cells, the mutation bars the virus from entering. A new AIDS drug, Selzentry, made by Pfizer Inc., doesn’t attack HIV itself but works by blocking CCR5.
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To prepare for the transplant, Dr. Hütter first administered a standard regimen of powerful drugs and radiation to kill the patient’s own bone marrow cells and many immune-system cells. This procedure, lethal to many cells that harbor HIV, may have helped the treatment succeed.
The transplant specialists ordered the patient to stop taking his AIDS drugs when they transfused the donor cells, because they feared the powerful drugs might undermine the cells’ ability to survive in their new host. They planned to resume the drugs once HIV re-emerged in the blood.
But it never did. Nearly two years later, standard tests haven’t detected virus in his blood, or in the brain and rectal tissues where it often hides.
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