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Possible AIDS Cure Found
Timothy Ray Brown
I know, everyone hates history, but hang in with me, this one is important.
His name was Gabriel Lemieux. He arrived in Québec in 1638 or 1643. The story of his life in New France is not what matters here, particularly since it was intentionally muddied. What matters is his birth. Gabriel was born “on promise of marriage” in Rouen, Normandy, in 1630, to Thomas Lemieux and Anne LeCornu. The Black Plague was raging in the province. Thomas died of it, as did Thomas’ mother and one brother, Anne’s mother and several other members of the two extended families. But Anne never contracted it. Anne disappeared from the public record after her son’s birth, and he was turned over to his father’s family to raise. A large number of the early settlers of French Canada came from Normandy after the plague.
Fast forward to rural England in the 1990s. A DNA analysis was performed on the residents of a small village in the Cotswolds who had traceable ancestors to the 16th and 17th centuries. Comparison of the death records of the ancestors with the DNA results turned up a link between those who either did not contract the Black Plague or who survived it with a mutated gene that carries resistance to HIV, anthrax and plague.
Put these two things together and you have a fairly good idea of why certain anomalies in French Canadian genealogies led to scientific interest in the incidence of that genetic mutation in French Canadians in the past twenty years.
Someone finally put two and two together and with amazing results.
Timothy Brown had AIDS. He also had leukemia. In 2007, he received a blood transplant to treat this leukemia. But, his doctors took a huge leap and searched out a particular blood donor. They rejected 70 otherwise compatible donors looking for the one with the “Black Plague” mutation.
Not only was Brown’s leukemia put into remission, but his AIDS was cured. Not just held in check the way all the AIDS drugs do, but totally, completely cured.
About 1% of all Caucasians carry the mutated gene. It is even rarer in people of other races, not surprisingly given the history of the Black Plague. This information helps explain why HIV/AIDS has taken on epidemic patterns in Africa. There is little or no genetic resistance to the virus.
Brown received adult blood, but StemCyte, an umbilical cord blood bank, is seeking a larger pool of donors. With umbilical cord blood, there is a greatly reduced rejection factor than that seen in adult blood donations. Dr. Lawrence Petz, medical director of StemCyte, told ABC News that this firm has tested 17,000 cord blood samples and only found 102 that had the HIV-resistant mutation. The have begun offering cord blood transplants for HIV-infected patients. The first occurred a few weeks ago, but it will be months before the effects are verified. There is a second transplant recipient planned in Spain.
Given what is known about the history of the plague and those who either never contracted it or survived it, it might be possible to concentrate efforts to find those who carry the mutation to certain populations. These are not mutations that occurred before written history or before vital statistic records were kept. They occurred in cultures with both church and civic records dating back to that time period. And in French Canada especially, it occurred in a culture that is even more obsessed with genealogy than Mormons (and far more accurate.)
Timothy Brown is very grateful for that extra effort in finding the perfect blood donor for him five years ago, but he also feels a certain level of guilt about being the only person cured with this treatment so far. He told ABC, “I don’t want to be the only person in the world cured of HIV. I want a cure for everyone.”
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jmoc
July 17, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Thank you for your article & reply to a comment… You included even more info in your comment that I am excited to look into further, such as possible cures rather than a lifetime of pills.
John Hoza
June 11, 2012 at 5:31 pm
A couple of thoughts on the 1st posters comments:
1) You mention that deletion of the CCR5 receptor “affords SOME protection” to HIV. In fact, it’s much closer to full immunity than “some protection”.
2) It seems you’re implying that Mr. Brown’s leukemia treatment had something to do with eradication of his HIV. Insofar as I’m aware, chemotherapy has never been shown to have any effect on HIV; to wit, although numerous HIV patients have endured chemotherapy over the years similar to what Mr. Brown received (minus the CCR5 deletion), none have been purged of HIV prior to Mr. Brown. This would seem to indicate, a view held by the majority of the scientific community, that it was the CCR5 mutation / deletion that left him HIV free.
3) Your statement that “Mr. Brown claims to be free of HIV disease”, while technically true (he does make that “claim”), makes it sound like his HIV status is somehow open to debate. In fact, scientists and HIV labs worldwide have confirmed his negative status. The man is free of HIV; it is a fact, not simply a “claim”.
Your other thoughts regarding the US healthcare system, the ability to screen in the US vs. Germany, Mr. Brown’s difficulties during surgery, etc, have little if anything to do with the original premise of the article: deletion / mutation of the CCR5 receptor via whatever method (bone marrow transplant, gene therapy treatment, etc.) is likely the way towards a cure.
Veritable Virgo
June 10, 2012 at 7:05 am
This article seems to be posted in relative proximity to a post that also ran on CBS News.
I have issues with both.
The foundation story seems to be a rehash of one that got significant media attention last year – namely “The Berlin Patient”, though your article fails to make the connection between Mr. Timothy Ray Brown and the treatment he received in Berlin, Germany for his leukemia. While you do make references to a leukemia treatment, the specifics around that treatment are missing. In fact, the focus on unique immunity to the Black Plaque and the French Canadians only muddies the story further.
The responsible thing to do with journalism of this type is to clearly inform your audience that this is a unique outcome for the treatment of leukemia in which the patient also had AIDS. The doctors clearly felt that there was no value in enduring the risks and expense of curing a patient’s leukemia if he was only going to go on and die from the advanced symptoms of his HIV disease. Looking for a donor with the specific genetic mutation that affords SOME protection against HIV infection was both genius and the next obvious logical next step.
Today Mr. Brown claims to be free of HIV disease; a claim that many have morphed into “a possible cure”. The realities of this, however, are that this is a specialized treatment for leukemia and one that is not currently available as a mainstream therapeutic option for the masses (read millions) of people living with an HIV diagnosis today. Because treating leukemia involves the eradication of the immune system and donation of bone marrow, a patient is often at risk of death as a result of the procedure itself. If I remember correctly Mr. Brown nearly died three times during the procedure. Your article does not address this, instead offering a story that sounds like anyone can just pick up the phone and schedule their HIV cure treatment.
This is irresponsible at best, since it has the potential to be perceived by the less scientifically-educated masses as an alternate to the HIV prevention messages available today.
In addition, there is also the consideration that Mr. Brown’s treatment took place in Germany where the health insurance/coverage rules are vastly different from that in the United States. The level of genetic screening alone that took place in Germany would be nearly impossible to duplicate here in the U.S. simply because most major insurance carriers do not allow for it. This is one case among millions of potential cases and it feels just a bit irresponsible for this story to surface once again particularly at the start of LGBT Pride Month.
Linda Carbonell
June 10, 2012 at 3:33 pm
My apologies if my piece was incomplete. My source did not go into the details that you did. However, my focus was on the genetic mutation, not the site and process of the treatment. I have known about the mutation for almost 10 years now, and have discussed with a French Canadian scientist their interest in isolating factors from this mutation. It is the other aspects of the mutation, the resistance factor to anthrax specifically, that had piqued interest. Randomly testing thousands of blood samples to find 100 potential donors seems like wasted effort when there is a clear pattern already established for who is the most likely carrier of this mutation. Brown’s case, and the one in Madrid, are first steps in developing a better way to use this genetic mutation that could evolve into less dangerous procedures.
To me, it just seems logical to focus on populations with a genetic concentration of ancestrial mutants. My husband is French Canadian and 15 years of doing his genealogy have shown me how interrelated French Canadians are, with ancestor lines weaving back and forth from a very small origin group, doubling back over and over again until almost all French Canadians are their own cousins several times over. That “braided rug” instead of “family tree” aspect has intensified certain genetic factors rather than allowing them to be watered down over the centuries.
Attacking HIV/AIDS from a genetic route as an alternative to the conventional ones is a new possibility. Many breakthroughs in science and medicine happen because someone takes a leap of logic, as in using a cancer drug to treat Alzheimer’s Disease.
It was certainly not my intention to give the impression that this is a done deal, if anything, it is part of my on-going rage over the way our medical system prevents cures and treatments. The British had a wonderful breakthrough in the 1990s for the treatment of MS using stem cells, but America never even reached human trials because of the “ethics” issues raised by religious fanatics who spread the idea that the only way to harvest stem cells was to create abortion mills for that purpose. Now, a dog can get stem cell treatment for osteoarthritis, but humans in America cannot. I have resisted stating outright that the barricade to stem cell research is the pharmaceutical and medical industries who know that stem cell cures will wipe out their huge profits for lifetime “treatments” and I leave it to others to make that conspiracy-theory connection. With friends and relatives in Canada, I am very aware of the realities of our extremely expensive, money-buys-care, warped and inhumane medical system in America.
I have had two friends die in the past five years of things that other countries cure with stem cell therapies. It is extremely personal to me. One was triaged down the waiting list for a Thai facility that treats congestive heart disease because of her age (75). The explosion in applications to that Thai facility were a result of an American news story. The other was killed slowly by the medications given him for severe, steroid-induced osteoporosis, medications that ate away at his kidneys and other organs. He was only 36. But I also watched two young men who were diagnosed with testicular cancer. The Canadian had his sperm harvested and stored at state expense before being operated on less than a month after diagnosis. The American spent eight months fighting to be treated because he was in college in one state and his parents’ insurance was in another.
Again, I apologize for my source being incomplete. I usually try to dig deeper, but some days life gets in the way of blogging. And I thank you for the additional information. I think we both have the same goal, to see medicine in America made more affordable and accessible, and more focused on cures instead of decades of expensive treatment.