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**GOD** · 01-18-2012, 12:44 AM

free ride to harvard

**BIG E WINNING** · 01-18-2012, 12:52 AM

Great news if true.

Now if the government can quit bullshitting and give us the AIDS cure.

Simply...amazing · 01-18-2012, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winning™

Great news if true.

Now if the government can quit bullshitting and give us the AIDS cure.

Long read but oh well

Quote:

Dr. Awadhesh K. Gupta, medical director at Foley Walk-In Med Care, said he first heard of the medical breakthrough in April when he attended the Annual Conference of the American College of Physicians in Internal Medicine in Philadelphia.

It’s a conference Gupta tries to attend every year.

“This is the most prestigious organization of physicians in Internal Medicine and is responsible for certifying post graduate training in Internal Medicine. It is also one of the oldest,” he said.

According to Gupta, who has been practicing medicine in the South Baldwin area since 1997, the cure was first reported in early 2008 by a group of physicians from Germany at the annual conference on “Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections” in Boston. The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, finally published the report in its Feb. 12, 2009, issue, Gupta said.

So why has the news of the first case of HIV/AIDS cure received so little attention where the public is concerned?

“I can’t be sure as to why so little publicity,” Gupta said recently.

“My guess is that most scientific researchers are somewhat stunned that a clinician — not a research scientist — has been able to come up with the cure. Most of the big research money and big name American institutions are somewhat embarrassed to acknowledge that the very first case of HIV cure is not coming from their institutions.”

The cure, instead, is coming from Charity University Hospital in Berlin, Germany, and the doctor is Gero Huetter, who works in the Department of Hematology, Oncology and Transfusion Medicine at the same hospital.

Asked about the reaction of attendees at the medical conference in Philadelphia as regarded the news of an HIV/AIDS cure, Gupta said, “Unfortunately, because of the hectic schedule, I did not try to engage too many physicians. However, the doctor presenting this information seemed extremely excited about it.”

AN AMERICAN

WORKING IN BERLIN

As Gupta explains the case and cure in question, a 40-year-old American working in Berlin had been HIV-positive for 10 years. The patient’s HIV infection had been under control for four years with “conventional HAART treatment regimen” (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy).

When the patient developed leukemia, however, a bone marrow transplant of stem cells was done using standard protocol, which Gupta said includes radiation therapy and chemotherapy prior to the transplant.

“Remember, once you stop HIV drugs, the HIV viral count rises very rapidly, usually within a few days to a week,” Gupta said.

According to Gupta, Huetter, the German physician treating the American, deliberately chose a stem cell donor who had a gene mutation known as “CCR-5 Delta- 32,” rather than using the best matched donor.

Gupta said Huetter remembered research first observed in 1996 - research Gupta said is well known in the scientific community. That research found that certain gay men in the San Francisco area remained uninfected with HIV in spite of engaging in risky sexual activities. As it was later discovered, those men had the CCR-5 Delta-32 gene mutation.

As it turned out, the patient’s stem cell transplant was a success, Gupta said, even though the patient had to have a second stem cell transplant (from the same donor) when his leukemia relapsed.

“This patient has been off all his HIV drugs for two years now,” Gupta said. “He continues to show no detectable signs of HIV in all the known places HIV is detected — no signs of HIV in his blood, bone marrow, lymph nodes, intestines or brain.” Also, the patient’s T-cell count remains normal.

Thus, according to Gupta, within the limits of scientists’ ability to detect HIV, it appears this patient’s HIV has been “eradicated.”

CCR-5 DELTA-32

The gene mutation CCR-5 Delta-32 is found mostly in white European populations, especially northern Europeans and Scandanavians, according to Gupta, who is on the staff of South Baldwin Regional Medical Center and served as chief of medicine in 2008.

“Those who have this gene mutation from both parents are completely resistant to most common forms of HIV infection. You can get tested for it if you wish,” he said.

“It is believed that this genetic mutation may have happened during long periods of small pox, plague and other pandemics that devastated European populations.”

While the “American living in Berlin” case is in Gupta’s words the “first case of confirmed cure of HIV in the world,” he cites a 1989 case that is similar. Dr. John Rossi, currently at City of Hope Cancer Center in Durate, Calif., had a 41-year-old patient with AIDS and lymphoma. The patient underwent radiation and drug therapy in removing his bone marrow and receiving new cells from a donor.

Whether the donor had the CCR-5 Delta-32 gene mutation or not is not known, Gupta said, but when the patient died of his cancer at age 47 autopsy tests from eight organs and the tumor revealed no HIV.

“I have no doubts that present day high tech stem cell transplantation from CCR-5 Delta-32 donors can cure HIV,” Gupta said, noting, at the same time, that the procedure is expensive at present and has significant risks of complications and a high mortality related to the procedure itself.

**CamillePunk** · 01-18-2012, 01:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnDeFeatedKing

Either way I don't find this great if true. Overpopulation is already rapidly increasing and diseases are being overcome and we're going to be fucked in 2 decades or so with a population crisis that won't simply be curable.

As someone who's lost friends and family to cancer, and has friends and family currently fighting cancer, I just have to say go fuck yourself and die.

P.Smith · 01-18-2012, 01:58 AM

And with every step we're slowly destroying our planet...

**BtheVampireSlayer** · 01-18-2012, 02:09 AM

Damn too old to take her to prom oh well,this is just another step into the medical generation. Hopefully this cure will help on humans. Very smart girl she is.

Shining_Wizard1979 · 01-18-2012, 02:33 AM

She is smart, but she's also determined. We dumb things down for our kids so much, especially in math and science. Sometimes, these researchers get into a rut in their way of thinking, and a fresh perspective yields great ingenuity towards treatment.

If I would have continued on to a high school teaching career, I would have pushed for students to read and interpret primary literature as part of my coursework. As it was, I got them when I taught introductory biology labs in college, and we'd have to start with some of that from scratch. . . and it invariably led to a bunch of complaining about how learning that skill wasn't important to students who wanted to be doctors. My explanation to them was that they should be reading research in their field of interest.

Great to see someone who was motivated enough to do some phenomenal work!

**FandanGOAT** · 01-18-2012, 03:00 AM

Impressive stuff. Good news.

AzureShark · 01-18-2012, 03:33 AM

Awesome news.

Sliver C · 01-18-2012, 04:21 AM

Commendable. Its a way to target cancer cells, ie, a delivery mechanism. Not a cure for cancer. But close enough.

I have 3 masters degrees (Microbiology, Food Technology and Biotechnology) and am currently involved in cancer research (and no, I am not a nerd for it!). For the record, cures for some cancers are available, but the nature of the disease is such that any medicine is sure to have side-effects.

Let me give you an example in layman terms. Leukaemia is caused when two proteins abl and bcr, which function normally on their own, are fused to give a bcr-abl anomaly. This is due to chromosomal translocation (philadelphia chromosome). If bcr is fused to abl, it means that abl protein production is switched on continuously, resulting in cancerous tumors.

The medicine (STI571) involves targeting abl in general and destroying all abl. Now, this not only destroys bcr-abl, but also normal abl. But since the body has alternatives to abl, it may result in containment for leukaemia with minimum side-effects.

However, for other cancers, destruction of the normal protein along with abnormal protein could impair body function. Because it is only for abl's case that your body has an alternative. For other cancers, there may be no alternatives and the protein may be essential. Hence, no standard cure for cancer.

This girl has suggested a good delivery mechanism that affects only target cells, but it remains to be seen whether it is actually practical. The reason why this doesn't automatically imply a cure is because of all the work involved in actually designing the right drug (based on VMD visualisations of protein structure, targeting the right antibody recognition sites, screening, etc.) which is very, very, and I MEAN very, difficult. And you have to do it for each type of cancer as well.