Does the Berlin patient's HIV cure mean other people can be cured of HIV?

Does the Berlin patient's HIV cure mean other people can be cured of HIV?

Yes, but not right away. There's still no available cure for HIV. But the finding that it's really possible finally to cure AIDS has revitalized research.

"The Berlin case has moved the whole field," Zaia says. "Now major money is being directed from the National Institutes of Health into the area of a cure for HIV."

Several approaches show promise. Clearly it isn't practical -- or desirable -- to submit relatively healthy people with HIV to massive chemotherapy. But what if just a mild chemotherapy were used to create just enough room for HIV-resistant stem cells to gain a foothold?

Zaia's team is exploring the use of taking a patient's own cells and genetically engineering them to fight HIV. The first studies are being done on patients with HIV lymphoma, who already require chemotherapy. Four patients already have been treated with low doses of genetically modified cells -- and the good news is that the modified cells can survive and expand for at least two years.

Other researchers are using different techniques to alter stem cells to fight HIV. Until the Berlin patient, most experts considered all of these treatments unlikely to succeed. Now all eyes are upon them.

"In the future there will be a mild method of making space for these new HIV-resistant stem cells, so that they grow out and repopulate the immune system," Zaia says. "That is the goal. It may take a long time to get to that, but it will happen."