American man cured of AIDS

Dr. Gero Huetter said Wedneday his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

"We waited every day for a bad reading," Huetter said.

NVDL: Surely the secret to cancer cures and AIDS lies in piecing together why some people are immune or recover, and reproducing these traits.

clipped from health.yahoo.com As Huetter — who is a hematologist, not an HIV specialist — prepared to treat the patient's leukemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway. "I read it in 1996, coincidentally," Huetter told reporters at the medical school. "I remembered it and thought it might work."