HIV patient cured with Stem cell transpant

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/doct ... ransplant/

something about the donor had a blood abnormality that is resistant to HIV, but the discovery was unintentional as he was being treated for luekemia, but he was also HIV possitive.

This is really neat.

Wow! This is a huge breakthrough!! !

Ya I thought so too, now the NIH can stop doing clinical trials for a vaccine using adjuviants...which cause a host of autoimmune diseases

you are celebrating too soon. It will take years to establish the efficacy and safety of this approach.

ruveyn

I had just read about this prior to posting.

I have not read the article, however, there is a small population of individuals in the world who are immune to HIV. One of those groups of people descend from a small village in the UK, who's population survived a plague a few centuries ago due to the presence of a particular gene which left their cells devoid of the needed docking sites for that plague. As it turns out, those are the same docking sites that HIV needs to infect a cell, so these people do not contract HIV when exposed.

However, the virus is known to "hide", so that someone has been cured of HIV should not be accepted unless the individual has continued to test negative for many years.

Remarkable! Now for cancer...

Now the trick is how to create this lack of docking station in people in the form of a vaccine.

Gonna put my doctor hat on, now. There are a few things that need to be understood about this therapy:

1) The precursor to transplant is the effective destruction of the recipient's immune system to eliminate rejection and allow for the transplanted tissue (whether bone marrow or stem cells) to build a brand new one. That exposes the patient to extraordinary risk, because he will now be vulnerable to every disease to which he had previously developed immunity. There is a high lethality which means that this type of treatment is only viable in life threatening situtions.

2) Vaccination cannot introduce the particular immunity that this donor has into a recipient. This donor lacked a portion of the gene that produces a specific protein which is used by some strains of HIV to infect the hosts cells. But no vaccine is going to mutate this gene in every single one of the trillion or so copies that are found in every single cell of the body. The purpose of vaccination is to cause the body to create immune system cells that are sensitive to a specific virus so that they will attack that virus--which is a very different type of mechanism.

3) Even if this treatment were viable, the availability of donors is highly limited, since estimates are that less than 1% of the population has inhereted the defective gene from both parents. (If you got a good copy of the gene from one parent and a mutated copy from the other, then your cells are still going to produce the protein, because half of your DNA is still going to transcribe mRNA coded for the protein, which will be produced through translation in the cell.)

4) HIV is a quickly mutating virus--just because the version of the virus that infected this patient relied on CCR5 as a coreceptor does not mean that other strains are entirely reliant on CCR5, or that the virus cannot mutate into new strains that rely on other coreceptors.

This is a medically fascinating result, but it does not demonstrate a viable treatment for people infected with HIV. I am not even persuaded that it demonstrates a viable course of inquiry.

there is a small population of individuals in the world who are immune to HIV. One of those groups of people descend from a small village in the UK, who's population survived a plague I agree with Chronos on this one as, I recall seeing a television documentary about one of the few people whom the living descendants that survived the black plaque which, brought about the immunity to the HIV virus.2nd, Chronos is quite accurate in that the virus can hide within one's system therefore comprehensive testing is neeeded before any "cure" can be outright stated...

So if he is in fact cured...it cant be a viable cure because of the small population of donors??
Ok so I guess he was just one lucky duck then.

There was a woman in Hong Kong who I have donated Bone Marrow for. She was dying of Leukemia and they found that I was a match, after some very extensive blood tests done over a series of months. I was a match, and under went the extraction operations. Contrary to what 7 Pounds by Will Smith portrays, the operation was not painfu. As the standard proceedure is to knock people out when doing operations. (Although I should have opted to have my butt frozen with novocane), so I can watch the operation as curiosity (one of my Aspie skills is wanting to observe things.... observing strange things with wonder, and drilling holes in my butt is very very odd). I don't doubt the operation is not painful, as you do drill through bone and stuff. and the 3 needle tubes (these metal ones), did look freaky). Since I'm a freak I like freaky things)..I however did have a stiff butt and thights as if you just pulled a muscle or something, or have a sore back or something.

then the operation was a success, and she slowly over hte years recovered and prospered. This was a wow moment. Like it's my body goo, that the world, school, teachers, other peers, jobs, life has rejected. Yet it was perfect in saving a life, in a tremendous dramatic way! Now that's freaky!

What you would have to do is to remove some of the bone marrow from the HIV patient, mutate its genes in the sample removed so that the docking station is gone. Then, you have to destroy the bone marrow in the patient just like you would do to treat leukemia. After that, you would have to transplant the patient's altered HIV resistant bone marrow back into the patient.

Good luck.

That's very good news.