Ten years after the ‘Berlin patient,’ doctors announce a second person has been effectively ‘cured’ of HIV
By Kate Sheridan,
STAT
| 03. 04. 2019
For the second time, doctors appear to have put HIV into “sustained remission” with a stem cell transplant — effectively curing the recipient.
Their work, which was published in Nature and will be presented at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle on Tuesday, may encourage scientists working on new gene therapies based on similar principles and give hope to those living with the infection.
The case comes nearly 10 years after Timothy Ray Brown announced he was the so-called “Berlin Patient” — the first person who was functionally cured of HIV and able to stop taking antiretroviral drugs after an intensive round of chemotherapy and radiation and two bone marrow transplants.
The person who received this latest transplant in London has not taken antiretroviral drugs since September 2017; he is not identified in the paper.
“Those of us in the field have been waiting for a second cure via this approach,” said Dr. Keith Jerome, one of the leaders of HIV cure research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “As long as Timothy Brown was...
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Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.
In 2025, we published up to four posts every month, written by 12 authors (staff, consultants and allies), some in collaboration and one simply credited to CGS.
These titles are presented in chronological order, except for three In Memoriam notices, which follow. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive. Scroll down and “VIEW...
