AIDS Virus 'Eliminated' in Hammersmith Hospital Patient
Long term remission from HIV 'injects new hope in search for cure'
A patient who was treated with a stem cell transplant at Hammersmith Hospital has become only the second person in the world to have the AIDS virus 'eliminated'.
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust says it has achieved a sustained remission from HIV-1 after ceasing antiretroviral treatment.
Says Professor Eduardo Olavarria: " While it is too premature to say with certainty that our patient is now cured of HIV, he is clearly in a long term remission.
"We continue to monitor his condition, however the apparent success of this treatment injects new hope in the search for a long-awaited cure for HIV/AIDS."
The patient, who has requested to remain anonymous, was treated with a stem cell transplant at the hospital in Du Cane Road in 2016.
Following the transplant, antiretroviral therapy was discontinued and the patient has now remained in remission for 18 months.
The hospital says the case is similar to the ‘Berlin Patient’ - an American man treated in Germany 12 years ago who is still free of HIV - though the treatment was not identical.
The treatment was offered as part of a collaboration by the stem cell transplant team at Imperial College London, led by Professor Eduardo Olavarria and Dr Ian Gabriel and HIV scientists at University College London, led by Professor Ravindra Gupta.
The male patient was diagnosed with HIV infection in 2003 and developed an AIDS defining cancer, advanced Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, in 2012.
In 2016, he received a transplant of haematopoietic stem cells from a donor carrying a genetic mutation in the HIV receptor CCR5, which hinders the HIV virus from entering human cells.
The patient remained on antiretroviral drugs for 16 months after the transplant, at which point he stopped treatment. Using very sensitive monitoring techniques, the virus cannot now be identified and his new cells have shown that they cannot be infected by HIV-1 nearly three years after the transplant.
The details of the breakthrough case have been published online by the journal Nature and presented at an HIV conference in Seattle.
The study’s lead author, Professor Ravindra Gupta, said: "Finding a way to eliminate the virus entirely is an urgent global priority, but is particularly difficult because the virus integrates into the white blood cells of its host.
"By achieving remission in a second patient using a similar approach, we have shown that the Berlin Patient was not an anomaly, and that it really was the treatment approaches that eliminated HIV in these two people."
The professor added that this approach isn't appropriate as a standard HIV treatment due to the toxicity of chemotherapy, but he is 'hopeful' it will help them develop strategies that might eliminate HIV altogether.
March 13, 2019