The cure uses adult stem cells not embryonic ones. Few get "bent out of shape" over using those. The procedure is likely to be touted as a reason embryonic stem cell use is unnecessary.
In addition to being HIV resistent, the stem cells have to be a transplant "tissue match" for the recipient.
Only about 1% of the population has the necessary genotype to be donors.
The procedure is very expensive and painful. But hey, so were the first few appendectomies and cataract surguries.
Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.
The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.
The case was first reported at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, and Berlin doctors subsequently published a detailed case history in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2009.
They have now published a follow-up report in the journal Blood, arguing that based on the results of extensive tests, “It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient.”
