Gero Hütter

Gero Hütter (born 18 December 1968) is a German hematologist. Hütter and his medical team transplanted bone marrow deficient in a key HIV receptor to a leukemia patient, Timothy Ray Brown, who was also infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Subsequently, the patient's circulating HIV dropped to undetectable levels. The case was widely reported in the media, and Hütter was named one of the "Berliners of the year" for 2008 by the Berliner Morgenpost, a Berlin newspaper.

HIV treatment

In 2009, Hütter, Eckhard Thiel and others from the Charité Hospital in Berlin, Germany, published a report on the case in the New England Journal of Medicine. had both acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and HIV. The physicians found a bone marrow donor with a CCR5-Δ32 mutation in both genomic copies of a gene encoding a cell-surface chemokine receptor called CCR5. Because "most of HIV strains" use the CCR5 receptor to enter a host cell, the mutation confers resistance to HIV infection.

The mortality risk associated with bone marrow transplants is thought to contraindicate the use of this experimental treatment for HIV-positive individuals without leukemia or lymphoma. Before the treatment though the patient had low levels of the CXCR4 virus but after the treatment this type of HIV could not be detected either which Hütter called "very surprising". People without CCR5 can be more sensitive to some infections such as West Nile virus.

Jay Levy, one of the first researchers to isolate and describe HIV in the early 1980s, wrote an editorial accompanying Hütter's publication in the New England Journal of Medicine. Noting the reduction in detectable HIV in the patient's blood and the return of the patient's circulating CD4+ T-cell population to normal levels, with all of the cells expressing the resistant variant of CCR5, Levy cautions that calling this treatment a cure would be premature. Hütter concurred with this assessment.

Hütter received an award on June 3, 2010, from the AIDS Policy Project, a national advocacy group focused on an AIDS cure, and San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi on behalf of the people of San Francisco.

The text read: "Dr. Gero Hütter: In recognition of your historic achievement of being the first doctor to functionally cure AIDS/HIV through an innovative procedure that entails a remarkable example of the use of stem cell transplants. We join you with hope that your achievement will globally inspire researchers to explore new techniques and technologies for an AIDS cure. On behalf of the people of San Francisco, the AIDS Policy Project, and all those engaged in the combat against the HIV disease, the City and County of San Francisco extends its highest commendation!" —Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, Member, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, June 3, 2010