Tuesday, December 14, 2010

HIV Cured by Adult Stem Cells

The message from the scientist is that it works but is not practical. I think the 'it works' part is much more important. A lot of things that started off as impractical (or even impossible) are common place today.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/12/14/doctors-claim-hiv-positive-man-cured-stem-cell-transplant

"Timothy Ray Brown, an HIV-positive American living in Germany, had leukemia and was undergoing chemotherapy, when he received a transplant of stem cells from a donor carrying a rare, inherited gene mutation that seems to make carriers virtually immune to HIV infection.

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.
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