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Rarely is the word “cure” uttered by HIV researchers, but with one astonishing case report in early 2009, the prospect seems a bit less remote. The report described an HIV-infected man with acute myeloid leukemia who achieved long-term, drug-free virologic control after receiving an allogeneic stem-cell transplant from an HLA-identical donor who was homozygous for the CCR5 Δ32 allele (JW AIDS Clin Care Feb 13 2009). Although the clinical events as documented probably do not represent a true cure, lessons learned from the case may bring us closer to finding one someday.
Noteworthy aspects of this case included the absence of HIV-specific T-cell responses after transplantation, the decline in HIV-specific antibody responses during clinical fol…