Probable Cure for AIDS

Posted by Daniel Yerelian on November 11th, 2008 filed in Health

In an article from the Wall Street Journal, it seems Dr. Gero Hütter from Berlin has stumbled upon a potential cure for the AIDS virus while treating his patient for Leukemia.

Dr. Gero Hütter (Image from WSJ)

To sum it up for our readers, there exists certain humans who contain a genetic mutation in which the AIDS virus is not able to attach to their cell walls because of a missing molecule(The missing molecule is called CCR5).

While doing a bone marrow transplant, which is a common 2nd stage Leukemia treatment, Dr Hütter killed off all the patient’s existing immune cells and bone marrow cells and replaces the bone marrow with that of the donor. Luckily for the patient, the donor, chosen out of 80 potential donors, had the genetic mutation that blocks HIV infection. The mutated cells, replaced the patient’s cells and began to replicate with the mutation, blocking the virus. Two years later the patient’s blood and brains and rectal tissue is still free from the HIV virus.

Image of HIV blocking in mutated cells (Image from WSJ)

Downside with bone marrow transplants, they are only used in late stage cancer patients, and they kill the patients 30% of the time.

The genetic mutation can be introduced via genetic modification, but genetic engineering has gotten some bad press and researchers are reluctant to push in that direction.

This already might have occurred in 1989 when a cancer patient received a bone marrow transplant  which seemingly got rid of the HIV virus, but he died 45 days later and the long term results were thus unknown.

Read the Original Article Here