Yet another scientific breakthrough produced by stem cell research that doesn't require the destruction of human embryos (a continuing series)

Timothy Ray Brown, an HIV-positive American living in Germany, received a stem-cell transplant in 2007 as part of treatment for leukemia. Three years later, he appears to be free of HIV. Reports the Huffington Post:

On the heels of World AIDS Day comes a stunning medical breakthrough: Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the "Berlin Patient," received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood
affirming that the results of extensive testing "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

Brown's case paves a path for constructing a permanent cure for HIV through genetically-engineered stem cells.

The Huffington Post story leaves out a rather important detail. Were these stem cells harvested from human embryos? Fortunately, Fox News doesn't leave its readers guessing, and reports that the transplant was a bone-marrow transplant from a donor with "a rare, inheritend gene mutation that seems to make carriers virtually immune to HIV infection." What is more, the transplant appears to have cured Mr. Brown of leukemia too.


Unfortunately, this sort of treatment will not be widely available anytime soon, as explained in the Fox News article:

The transplant appeared to wipe out both diseases, giving hope to doctors, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been studying HIV/AIDS for almost 30 years, said while this is an interesting proof of concept, it’s absurdly impractical.

“It’s hard enough to get a good compatible match for a transplant like this,” Fauci told FoxNews.com, “But you also have to find compatible donor that has this genetic defect, and this defect is only found in 1 percent of the Caucasian population and zero percent of the black population. This is very rare.”

Fauci said while this patient is “functionally cured” this is not something you can do with every HIV- infected individual.

“This is not prime time to me at all,” he said. “This is a very unusual situation that has little practical application for a simple reason. This donor not only had to be a good compatible match, but the donor had to have a genetic defect of cells that do not express the receptor that the HIV virus needs to enter the cell.”

Fauci also pointed to the fact that this transplant process is not only expensive, it’s incredibly painful and complicated, and requires the patient to start a whole new regimen of drugs.

“This patient is trading one poison for another. He may not have to be on antiretroviral drugs anymore, but he has to take immunosuppressant drugs now to prevent the rejection of his transplant cells. Again, what this is, is an interesting proof of concept, but it’s absolutely impractical.”

Dr. Thomas Quinn, director of Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health told FoxNews.com that he is very familiar with the “Berlin patient” case.

“This was a new report that looked much deeper into whether HIV could still be present or lurking in the body in some way, not cured, and since the transplant he remains viral free and his cells appear to be resistant to infection,” he said.

Quinn said he agrees with the researchers on this case that it would be qualified as the first HIV cure, opening the door to alternative means of curing HIV.

“He [Brown] has been without therapy for three years and appears to be free of the virus,” he said. “It gives hope to the millions of people infected with HIV that cure is a feasible option in the future.”

Even though Brown’s procedure proved to be successful, Quinn also warns that this was a rare case and a bone marrow transplant is not a cure-all for other HIV patients.

“It is a near fatal procedure that he had to have done because of the leukemia, but this procedure is very expensive and you have to be transplanted with a donor who is shown to be already resistant to HIV,” Quinn said. “You’re asking for a tall order to replicate this in the future.”

Even so, who would have predicted 10 or even 5 years ago that stem cells -- adult stem cells -- could be used to spare even one patient from death by HIV and leukemia? Many other cures we take for granted today were once considered "unusual" and "impractical" and even "near fatal." Who knows what will come of this in the years ahead? (Particularly, one hastens to add, if people who support funding for adult-stem-cell research along these lines are not pilloried as being "anti-science.")

I will leave for our readers to ponder why HuffPo chose to omit the fact that adult stems cells were used and perhaps give the impression that this amazing development was due to embryo-destructive stem cell research.

(Previous posts on stem cell research can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)