A great step forward against AIDS. It is an announcement of a cure for HIV which is a first in France but not in the world. This patient followed by the Human Immunodeficiency Information and Care Center (CISIH) at Sainte-Marguerite Hospital, in Marseille, could be cured, announces the healthcare team.
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42 years after the discovery of the virus responsible for AIDS by French teams from the Pasteur Institute, a first case of “potential” cure for HIV has been recorded in France, in Marseille. This is the 8th case of functional cure for HIV after a bone marrow transplant in the world. France 3 Provence-Alpes takes stock of this hopeful case.
The patient had developed lymphoma
The person “potentially cured”, according to the press release from the AP-HM (Marseille hospitals) is a woman aged around sixty, monitored for her HIV status for 26 years (1999). “Despite effective antiretroviral treatments from 2010, she developed acute myeloid leukemia in 2020. An allogeneic bone marrow transplant carried out at the Paoli-Calmettes Institute in July 2020 made it possible to treat her leukemia.“, explains the press release.
After the transplant, the patient continued her antiretroviral treatment for three years before stopping in October 2023 and was followed very regularly by her doctor in Marseille.
The CISIH team, under the direction of Dr Sylvie BREGIGEON, is continuing the investigations in collaboration with Parisian researchers and experts in immunology after this first cure for HIV in France.
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© AP-HM
The particularity of the donor
And it is therefore this transplant which is at the origin of the cure for HIV. Indeed, “the donor had a rare genetic mutation called Delta 32 on CCR5 that prevents HIV from entering cells“.
After the transplant and stopping treatment in 2023, “more in-depth virological examinations were carried out during its surveillance, in collaboration with the Timone Virology Laboratory of Professor Philippe Colson: in particular ultrasensitive viral load tests, viral culture tests as well as a search for Pro-viral DNA corresponding to the possible reservoir of virus still present in its body“. All these tests came back negative.
7 other cases before her in the world
To date, she is not the first person in the world to be cured of HIV, but the eighth. “7 cases of functional cure of HIV after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation, aimed at treating lymphoma or leukemia, have been reported worldwide. For six of them, the donor carried the Delta 32 mutation on the CCR5 receptor. explains the AP-HM. The CCR5 delta-32 genetic mutation is known to naturally protect against HIV.
A patient in Berlin was the first case of recovery in 2009, another in 2019 in London, according to a press release from the Pasteur Institute dating back to February 2023.
This eighth case is therefore the first in France, presented in international conferences in recent months. Investigations are continuing in Marseille in collaboration with researchers in Paris and experts in immunology.
Advances, but not a treatment for the virus
This beautiful result is not, however, a new treatment. Doctors are talking about a breakthrough. And “This advance cannot be generalized to all patients affected by HIV.” The treatment associated with allograft is cumbersome. However, this result “opens new perspectives for research on the virus”.
“Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections fell in 2023 to their historic low, in a range between one million and 1.7 million, according to the annual report published in November by the UNAIDS agency.“, recalls AFP.
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