{"id":4327,"date":"2026-04-13T19:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T19:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/4327\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T19:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T19:27:15","slug":"from-the-oslo-to-the-berlin-patient-lessons-learned-from-10-people-cured-of-hiv-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/4327\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Oslo to the Berlin patient: Lessons learned from 10 people \u2018cured\u2019 of HIV | Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timothy Brown will forever hold a prominent place in the history of medicine. Better known as the Berlin patient, this man marked an unprecedented milestone in 2009 by becoming the first person with HIV to be free of the virus after receiving a very particular stem cell transplant. Doctors, cautious at the time, spoke of remission. But, for all intents and purposes, he was cured. There was no trace of the virus in his body, and there never was again: Brown died in 2020, but from a relapse of the cancer he had suffered from. His emblematic case demonstrated that eradicating the AIDS virus<\/a> was possible and paved the way for a therapeutic strategy that, although difficult to scale to the entire HIV-positive population, now includes 10 cases in remission: 10 people considered cured.<\/p>\n

The latest confirmed case was published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology<\/a>. He is the Oslo patient \u2014 a 62\u2011year\u2011old man who, after receiving another unique stem\u2011cell transplant to treat a blood cancer, stopped taking antiretrovirals and has now spent four years off treatment and free of the virus. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, they said that a cure was impossible, that the Berlin patient was a fluke. But 10 patients later, we know that it is possible to cure [HIV infection], and what we have to see now is how to scale it up,\u201d reflects Javier Mart\u00ednez-Picado, a researcher at IrsiCaixa and co-leader of the international consortium IciStem, which published this latest finding.<\/p>\n

HIV remains incurable to this day. And it poses a challenge to science: cunning and relentless, it can destroy the immune system, hide within our own cells, and mutate at extraordinary speed. It typically infects healthy cells \u2014 CD4 lymphocytes are its favorite \u2014 and integrates itself into their genetic material to stay out of sight and evade the body\u2019s defensive army. That is how it survives. Antiretroviral drugs can suppress it to minimal levels, but they never eliminate it entirely: the virus lies dormant, tucked away in a kind of hideout inside infected cells (the viral reservoir), and if treatment is stopped, it rebounds with astonishing speed.<\/p>\n

The AIDS virus always comes back. Or so it was believed for decades. The exceptional cases described \u2014 like Brown\u2019s or the Oslo patient\u2019s \u2014 have upended the rules of the game. \u201cThese milestones allow us to better understand how a cure occurs and to move toward strategies that are more applicable to all people living with HIV,\u201d says the IrsiCaixa researcher.<\/p>\n

The story of how this small group of exceptional cases came to be dates back to the 1990s, when doctors identified a healthy man who, despite repeated exposure to HIV, never became infected. Genetic studies revealed that he carried the CCR5 Delta\u201132 mutation \u2014 a genetic error that prevents the virus from entering the cell.<\/p>\n

That discovery sat in the scientific literature for years without clinical application, until the mid\u20112000s, when German hematologist Gero H\u00fctter, Brown\u2019s physician, revived it to design an unusual therapeutic plan for his patient. Timothy had leukemia and needed a stem\u2011cell transplant to treat his cancer, so H\u00fctter set out to find a donor who was not only compatible but also carried the CCR5 Delta\u201132 mutation. The idea was to kill two birds with one stone: cure the cancer and free him from HIV at the same time.<\/p>\n

And he succeeded.<\/p>\n

Killing two birds with one stone<\/p>\n

In stem cell transplantation, treatment begins with powerful chemotherapy to destroy the bone marrow, where the malignant tumor is located and where HIV also hides in one of its reservoirs. The chemotherapy wipes out both the cancer and the latently infected cells. Then, with the transplant of stem cells from a healthy donor, the marrow is repopulated with an army of healthy cells, the blood disorder is cured, and HIV is eliminated.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t end there. When the new cells also carry the rare CCR5 Delta\u201132 mutation, the virus is unable to open the molecular gateways it needs to enter and reinfect the cell. In other words, even if a trace of HIV were to remain after the transplant, it would have nowhere to go \u2014 it simply couldn\u2019t penetrate the cell.<\/p>\n

That is what happened to Brown \u2014 and to a handful of others up to this latest case in Oslo. After the transplant, their antiretroviral medication was withdrawn and the virus did not rebound. Adam Castillejo, known as the London patient, has now been free of HIV for nearly 10 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The newly reported case, the Oslo patient, who had myelodysplasia, is one of the oldest in the cohort. He received the transplant from his brother, who carried the mutation.<\/p>\n

These cases are beginning to move beyond the realm of medical anecdotes<\/a>. The study of the Oslo patient is part of the international IciStem 2.0 consortium, coordinated by IrsiCaixa, which since its creation has followed 40 people with HIV who have undergone stem\u2011cell transplants. Among these cases, Mart\u00ednez\u2011Picado explains, not all received cells from a donor with the virus\u2011resistant mutation. \u201cThere may be more cases like the Berlin or Oslo patients, but until now we haven\u2019t felt confident stopping treatment in people who didn\u2019t have the mutation,\u201d the physician acknowledges.<\/p>\n

The trickle of remissions over the past 15 years has already allowed scientists to draw lessons<\/a> from this therapeutic approach. They know, for example, that when the donor has two copies of the mutation, HIV remission can be achieved. When there is only one copy \u2014 or none \u2014 the virus may reappear once antiretroviral therapy is withdrawn. But even in this case, there are exceptions: the Berlin patient 2 and the Geneva patient achieved remission, even though their donors did not carry the double mutation.<\/p>\n

According to researchers at IrsiCaixa, this suggests that although the CCR5 Delta\u201132 double mutation increases the chances of success, it is not the only mechanism involved. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have learned is that the reason the viral reservoir disappears is not the mutation itself, but the donor\u2019s allogeneic immunity [an immune reaction of the donor\u2019s cells that detects the patient\u2019s own cells as foreign and destroys them, also eliminating all those infected with HIV],\u201d explains Mart\u00ednez-Picado. \u201cThis reaction is crucial. Then, the presence of the mutation is an added benefit because it means that if any reservoir reactivates, it will have nowhere to go.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Geneva patient is, for now, the only case of remission without the mutation playing a role.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the solution to HIV\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists admit that, for now, stem cell transplantation is not a viable option for everyone with HIV. It is a complex and high-risk procedure. \u201cWe are only performing transplants on people with hematological malignancies,\u201d says Mart\u00ednez-Picado. \u201cThis is not the solution to HIV. Currently, antiretroviral therapy is safe and, although it doesn\u2019t cure HIV, it is effective [in keeping the virus under control]. In this context, undergoing a transplant doesn\u2019t make much sense.\u201d <\/p>\n

The paradigm established by these 10 cases has nonetheless spurred new lines of research aimed at eradicating the virus. One avenue is the elimination of infected cells through genetic engineering. At IrsiCaixa \u2014 a research center funded by the La Caixa Foundation \u2014 scientists are exploring the potential of CAR\u2011T therapy<\/a>, which involves modifying a patient\u2019s own immune cells in the laboratory so they can recognize and destroy HIV\u2011infected target cells. It would be akin to \u201cclearing the bloodstream of infected cells so the body can repopulate itself with healthy ones,\u201d explains Mar\u00eda Salgado, who leads a project evaluating this strategy, in a statement.<\/p>\n

Other teams are also investigating gene therapies to modify the CCR5 gene and induce the well\u2011known CCR5 Delta\u201132 mutation, thereby blocking the virus from entering cells.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timothy Brown will forever hold a prominent place in the history of medicine. Better known as the Berlin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,3080,4352],"class_list":{"0":"post-4327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-cancer","10":"tag-nature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}