Rising Hope for AIDS Cure

I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine a couple of years ago regarding the discovery of a genetic mutation that makes people resistant to HIV. It was an email conversation, complete with many exclamation points, a sign of the times both in communication and in the promise of a cure for AIDS in our lifetime. Now, that promise is a little closer to becoming a reality.

According to ABC News, a 46-year-old man named Timothy Brown, diagnosed with AIDS, received a transplant of blood stem cells to treat leukemia in 2007. The adult blood donor had this HIV-resistant gene mutation. Brown is now the only person in the world to be cured of AIDS. But there will be more.

According to Dr. Lawrence Petz, the medical director for the umbilical cord blood bank StemCyte, the process is complicated by the fact that this HIV-resistant mutation is very rare, with fewer than 1 percent of Caucasians having it, and even fewer individuals of other races. Brown's transplant involved a very close donor match. However, umbilical cord blood doesn't require as close of a match. But it does require the rare mutation and Petz and his colleagues have only discovered 102 umbilical cord blood samples in 17,000 tested that contain it.

Within the past few weeks, an HIV-infected patient received a cord blood transplant. Another is planned later this year. It will take months to know if these patients will see an impact from the transplants as Brown did. But Petz is hopeful. He says that the cure can happen. It's just a matter of time.

I believe that the promise is much brighter with this advancement. I believe, as Petz and Brown believe, that there will be a cure for AIDS, for all people suffering from AIDS. It may take a bit longer to come, but it is happening. And that's a wonderful thing. A hopeful thing.

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