Overview
- The peer-reviewed report, which appeared Monday in Nature Microbiology, details the Oslo case and brings the tally of transplant-linked, long-term HIV remissions to ten since 2009.
- He underwent the transplant in 2020 to treat a myelodysplastic syndrome, with his brother serving as the compatible donor.
- The donor carried the rare CCR5-delta32 mutation, which blocks HIV from entering key immune cells by removing the CCR5 doorway the virus uses.
- Under medical supervision he stopped antiretroviral therapy two years after the transplant and remains without detectable virus four years later.
- Researchers caution that stem-cell transplants are high-risk and used for blood cancers, yet the growing set of remissions is steering work on CAR-T cells and gene editing, and exceptions without the CCR5 mutation suggest other immune routes to target.