HIV GETS A CURE

HIV CURE MIGHT BE HERE FINALLY AFTER A THIRD PATIENT IS HIV VIRUS FREE AFTER RECEIVING VIRUS RESISTANT CELLS

A 53-year-old man in has become at least the third person with HIV to be declared clear of the virus after a procedure that replaced his bone marrow cells with HIV-resistant stem cells from a donor.

For years, antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been given to people with HIV with the aim of lowering the virus to almost undetectable levels and preventing it from being transmitted to other people. But the immune system keeps the virus locked up in reservoirs in the body, and if an individual stops taking ART, the virus can begin replicating and spreading.

The stem-cell technique involved was first used to treat acute myeloid leukemia in 2007 via a bone marrow transplant, in which those cells were destroyed and replaced with stem cells from a healthy donor with a genetic mutation called CCR5Δ32/Δ32, which prevents the CCR5 cell-surface protein from being expressed on the cell surface. HIV uses that protein to enter immune cells, so the mutation makes the cells effectively resistant to the virus.