Earlier this month (February 8), Prof. Luc Montagnier, a Nobel laureate who discovered the HIV virus from AIDS, passed away at the age of 89. Montana, who founded the World AIDS Research and Prevention Foundation and co-led the International Virological Cooperation Program, must have been very pleased to know that this week (Tuesday) U.S. doctors reported for the first time ever a woman who contracted AIDS and was completely cured thanks to a complex, innovative and groundbreaking procedure. Stem cell transplantation.
The NBC network said the investigators were cautious when they reported that “there is a possibility that the woman was completely cured of HIV and that this is the first case of its kind.” As far as is known so far, only three men around the world, who have undergone a different innovative treatment, have reached full healing. Two of the men with AIDS who had a relapse were English and German – one was treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the other also had AML.
However, the researchers added that it is known about two other cases of women that the body’s natural immune system, in an unusual way, managed to get rid of the virus without special treatment. They are considered “elite” among HIV patients because their natural immune system suppresses the virus well, prevents its transcription and even without medication. Their immune system has virtually wiped out all of the virus’s capabilities.
Initially, doctors had to eliminate the patient’s immune system with chemotherapy and sometimes radiation, in the hope that this would destroy enough cells in the immune system that provide shelter for the virus, despite the antiviral treatments.
The first case ever that AIDS patient was fully treated and cured was that of American Timothy Ray-Brown who in addition to HIV also had a patient with severe myeloid leukemia (AML). He received a donation of stem cells from a person who had a rare genetic disorder but his immune system cells that focused on HIV created a natural resistance to the virus and thus led to a cure. The treatment strategy adopted in Brown’s case was the first of its kind reported in 2008 and since then, it also appears to have contributed to the healing of two other people. However, it has failed in its attempts to cure other AIDS patients. But Brown died at the age of 54 in September 2020, after leukemia returned to him.
The announcement of the new medical achievement was made by Dr. Karl Dieffenbach, director of the AIDS unit at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Allergies at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Replacement of the immune system
The innovative therapeutic process is in fact an attempt to replace one person’s immune system with another’s, while treating both the AIDS virus and cancer at the same time. Initially, doctors had to eliminate the patient’s immune system with chemotherapy and sometimes radiation, in the hope that this would destroy enough cells in the immune system that provide shelter for the virus, despite the usual antiviral treatments the patient receives.
The procedure has been criticized for being unethical because they try to cure HIV by transplanting stem cells – sometimes a toxic and even fatal procedure – when it comes to a person who does not have “potential for deadly cancer”, but there is a high risk that he will later develop
Stem cell transplantation selected for this purpose required rigorous laboratory testing to ensure that they were well resistant to HIV and accurately transplanted. The result: any condition of infection with another infection will not affect other immune cells.
The sophisticated procedure has been criticized for being unethical because they try to cure HIV by stem cell transplantation – sometimes a toxic and even fatal procedure – when it comes to a person who has no “potential for deadly cancer” but is at high risk of developing it later.
Dr. Deborah Persaud, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who chaired the NIH Scientific Committee that accompanied the procedure, said: “While we are very excited about the case (the woman’s cure), we must also “Emphasize that this treatment method is not yet applicable to millions of AIDS patients worldwide.”
The announcement of the medical achievement was made at the annual conference (Zoom) of experts dealing with specific infectious diseases (Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections). The woman, a New York resident, the daughter of parents of mixed descent, was treated at Cornell University’s Presbyterian Medical Center. She was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and with leukemia in 2017.
A multidisciplinary team joined the physicians who treated the patient. The team explained that a donation of stem cells containing a sufficient amount of leukocyte antibodies (HLA) is required that optimally enables the transplant success but it is desirable that the donor also has what is known as rare genetic abnormality to confer resistance against HIV. This rare genetic disorder is particularly common in people of northern European descent. It is estimated that this is 1% of the population, which makes it difficult to find a suitable donor to carry out the innovative procedure.
There are currently about 38 million HIV patients worldwide. The prevalence of the disease in the United States is high among African-Americans and Hispanics – a total of about 1.2 million people. A lower rate is found among whites.
The haploid transplant
The report provided the following details: The procedure in which the woman was treated is known as the haplo-cord transplant and was developed to expand the toolbox for the treatment of cancer and especially leukemia.
In the first stage, the patient is transplanted with blood from the umbilical cord, which contains many powerful stem cells. A day later the patient receives large amounts of adult stem cells. These thrive rapidly and over time are replaced by cells originating in the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord blood is taken from the newborn. The two donors – one who donated the adult stem cells and the other the umbilical cord blood – each individually only partially matched the HLA but in combination this dual transplantation provided the optimal treatment.
Following this complex transplant the healthy woman and even in her leukemia disease has a relapse that has been going on for more than four years. After the transplant, she continued to receive the usual drug treatment for HIV and so far no re-emergence of the virus has been seen in her body. Experts estimate that at this point in time perhaps only 50 Americans each year will be able to receive this complex treatment and enjoy its benefits.
AIDS virus detected: “Corona virus was created in a Chinese laboratory“
About four decades have passed since the discovery of the HIV virus by French AIDS virologist Prof. Luc Montagnier, a Nobel laureate who died at the age of 89 earlier this month.
Montana, who founded the World Aid Research and Prevention Foundation and co-managed the International Virological Cooperation Program, discovered the virus in 1983, a year after he began researching the subject, and in 2008 won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery with his French biochemist colleague Francois in the US. Their partner in the award was the German scientist Herald Zur-Haozen, who discovered the link between the papilloma virus and cervical cancer.
Prof. Montana. Photo: Prolineserver (talk) / Wikimedia
In recent years Montana has distanced itself from its peers and conducted experiments, most of which were called “strange” and challenged the basic principles of science. It is also known as a prominent antidote to corona vaccines. In 2020 he caused a public outcry when he said he believed the corona virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. In 2012 another storm erupted when a scientific conference raised the hypothesis that long-term antibodies may serve as a good treatment for autism, and in another conference that DNA emits electromagnetic radiation even after an infection has disappeared.
Before the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, Montana made some significant discoveries about the properties of viruses and contributed to a better understanding of how viruses can alter the genetic information of surrogates, organisms that carry parasites and provide them with nutrients. His research on interferon, a protein that protects the body from viruses, paved the way for drugs for various viral diseases.
At the height of his career he taught in the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris and was a Fellow in various research institutions such as the French National Center for Scientific Research, Queens College London, the Pasteur Institute. His scientific achievements are adorned with numerous medals, including the French Legion of Honor, the Albert Prize for Survey of Basic Medical Research, the Japan Prize and the Louis-Jante Prize for Medicine and the CNRS Silver Medal.
In 1982, Montana asked the Jewish physician Dr. Willy Rosenbaum, who worked at the Hôpital Bichat Hospital in Paris, to investigate the possibility that the cause of the then mysterious syndrome, known as AIDS, was a virus. It is a virus. Dr. Rosenbaum took a biopsy from the lymph node from one of his patients, a sample in which the virus was discovered. The virus was first named LAV (LAV-lymphadenopathy-associated virus), a year later, a group of American researchers led by Robert Gallo confirmed the discovery and then the virus received a new nickname HIV called HTLV-IIIי(,human T-lymphotropic virus type III).
The battle for the discovery of the virus
Some years the noise of the world of science because of the controversy over who has the first right to discover the virus, whether to Montagnia’s group, or to Gallo’s? The source of the controversy is the surprising resemblance between the characteristics of the first virus identified by the two groups of researchers and the later various, between the strains of viruses identified in the second phase. Among other things, allegations were made that Gallo made unethical use of a sample taken from the Pasteur Institute. The dispute between the two lasted until 1986 and was settled only after the presidents of the United States and France, Reagan and Mitterrand met.
In 1986, the hawkish scientists decided to share the right to be called the “discoverer of the AIDS virus” and even to share the benefits of the test developed to detect the virus. Then the use of the two nicknames, the French (LAV) and the American (HTLV-III) was stopped and a new nickname was decided: HIVי(human immunodeficiency virus), the controversy concluded that the source of the virus discovered by Gallo was the same as that discovered by Montana.
A 1993 report by the Office of Research Integrity in the United States stated that Gallo had in fact “discovered” the virus in a sample sent to it by Montana. It was not determined whether Gallo was aware of the source of the virus when the study was conducted in 1983, but Gallo misrepresented information about his laboratory’s true ability to grow a culture of the virus from a sample sent to it from a Montagne laboratory and thus obscured the importance of the French laboratory’s discovery.
In 2008 the controversy was finally settled when the Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine were announced: Montana and Francoise in the USA, and the award committee did not mention Gallo’s work at all.