A 53-year-old man from Germany has been cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant in 2014, according to findings published Monday in Nature Medicine, as researchers say he is the fifth to be cured of the virus—which affects more than 30 million people globally—after receiving the procedure.
The first person to be cured of HIV was Timothy Ray Brown, who was referred to by researchers as “the Berlin patient” in findings published in 2009. Three others have also been cured, including “the London patient” in 2019 and “The City of Hope” and “New York” patients in 2022.
All four underwent stem cell transplants—a high-risk procedure also referred to as a bone marrow transplant—to treat blood cancer and received an HIV-resistant mutation from their donors, which deletes a protein the virus normally uses to enter blood cells.