CALIFORNIA, KOMPAS.com – Timothy Ray Brown, known as the “Berlin patient,” was the first known patient to recover from the infection HIV, has passed away because of cancer at 54 years old.
Brown made history as the first person to recover from HIV infection, he died at his home in Palm Springs, California, United States on Tuesday (29/09/2020) according to his partner, Tim Hoeffgen.
Launch Associated Press (AP) Brown died of cancer. Whereas Brown previously underwent unusual bone marrow and stem cell transplants in 2007 and 2008 which over the years appeared to be healing leukemia and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“Timothy is a symbol that it is possible, under special conditions, to cure HIV patients, something that many scientists doubt that it can be done,” said Dr. Gero Huetter, the Berlin doctor who led Brown’s historic medicine.
“It is a very sad situation” that the cancer came back and claimed her life, because she was still HIV free, said Huetter, who is now medical director of a stem cell company in Dresden, Germany.
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The International AIDS Society, with which Brown spoke at an AIDS conference after his successful treatment, issued a statement mourning the man’s death and said that the community and Dr. Huetter owes him “many thanks” for encouraging research into healing efforts.
Brown was working in Berlin as a translator when he was diagnosed with HIV and later, leukemia.
Transplantation is known to be an effective treatment for blood cancer, but Huetter wanted to try to cure HIV infection as well by using a donor with a rare gene mutation that provides natural resistance to the AIDS virus.
The first transplant was performed on Brown in 2007 and was successful, his HIV infection gradually recovered but not with his leukemia.
Brown then underwent a second transplant from the same donor in 2008 and by then it appeared the cancer was starting to fade away.
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However, the cancer came back suddenly last year, according to Brown in a recent interview with AP.
“I’m glad I did,” Brown said of the transplant. “This opens doors that were not there before and inspires scientists to work even harder to find a cure,” Brown said.
Apart from Brown there is Adam Castillejo who was referred to as a “London patient” until he revealed his identity earlier this year – also believed to have been cured with a transplant similar to Brown’s in 2016.
Because such donors are rare and transplants medically risky, researchers have tested gene therapy and other ways to try to achieve similar effects.
At an AIDS conference in July, researchers said they may have achieved a long-term remission in Brazilian men using a potent combination of drugs meant to clear inactive HIV from their bodies.
Mark King, a Baltimore man who blogs, said Brown was “just a magnet for people living with HIV, like me,” and embodied the hope that there would be a cure.
“He has said from the start, ‘I don’t want to be the only one. They have to keep working on this, “said King.
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