Tweets are flying with news of a major medical breakthrough: Doctors in Germany have strong evidence that they’ve cured a man of HIV using stem cells.
HuffPo reports that Timothy Ray Brown, an American dubbed the “Berlin Patient,” underwent a stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat leukemia. The stem cell donor, chosen after careful vetting by Brown’s medical team, also had a natural resistance to HIV. Those cells regenerated more HIV-resistant cells and, his doctors say, there is now no sign of the infection.
The doctors’ findings will be published in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Blood, but the Web is aflutter with the implications of their research. This, one source reports, paves the way for an HIV cure using genetically engineered stem cells.
