For the first time, an American study team stated that it had possibly treated HIV in a woman. The woman who received the treatment is being dubbed "the New York patient," due to receiving the treatment in New York City. 

Building on previous triumphs and failures in HIV-cure research, these scientists utilized a cutting-edge stem cell transplant procedure that they anticipate would increase the number of patients who can undergo such therapy to several dozen each year.

Researchers are also aware of two women whose immune systems appear to have defeated the pathogen. The approaches used in this case, which was initially revealed in 2008, appears to have cured HIV in two additional persons. 

Experts argue that attempting an HIV cure by a stem cell transplant — a hazardous, often lethal process in anybody who does not already have a possibly fatal malignancy or other illness that predisposes them to such dangerous therapy — is unethical.

A hard find

According to Dr. Deborah Persaud, disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and chair of the NIH-funded scientific committee behind the new case study, explained that although there was much excitement the new case of cure, stem cell treatment is "Still not a feasible strategy for all but a handful of the millions of people living with HIV."

Persaud partnered with Dr. Yvonne J. Bryson,  a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, Dr. Jingmei Hsu, and Dr. Koen Besien to evaluate the patient in lab tests.

Their team has long sought to find appropriate stem cell donors to treat someone's cancer and HIV. The donor must need a close enough human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, and a rare genetic abnormality conferring HIV resistance, usually occurring in north European ancestry at a rate of 1 percent.

The Weill Cornell team created the surgery used to treat the New York patient, termed as a haplo-cord transplant, to increase cancer therapy choices for persons with blood cancers who lack HLA-identical donors.

The Weill Cornell team and its partners discovered the HIV-resistant genetic mutation in the umbilical cord blood of an infant donor for the New York patient, who has mixed heritage. They combined those cells with stem cells from an adult donor in a transplant.

Bryson and her colleagues had already tested hundreds of cord blood samples for the genetic mutation before the New York patient became a candidate for the haplo-cord therapy. She's been in remission from leukemia for almost four years.

Persaud was the author of a 2013 case study of a child who was in a state of "functional cure": She contracted HIV from her mother in utero and was treated with an atypically intensified antiretroviral regimen after birth.

When the study was announced, the child was a toddler and had been off HIV treatment for 10 months. After treatment interruption, the child's virus returned after 27 months. 

If a few years pass without any symptoms of active infection, the authors of this recent case study believe the New York patient will be considered fully healed.