Timothy Ray Brown made history as the "Berlin patient", he was the first person known to be cured of HIV infection. Brown has passed away at the age of 54 due to cancer.
Successful HIV treatment
On September 29, Brown passed away at his home in Palm Springs, California, according to a social media post by his partner, Tim Hoeffgen.
The cause of his death was a return of the cancer that originally prompted the unusual bone marrow and stem cell transplants that Brown received in 2007 and 2008, which for years seemed to have eliminated his leukemia as well as his HIV infection, the virus that causes AIDS.
According to Dr. Gero Huetter, the Berlin physician who led Brown's historical treatment, Brown symbolized that it is possible, under special circumstances, to rid a patient of HIV. He said that it is something that many scientists had doubted could be done, according to The Guardian.
Dr. Huetter added that what happened to Brown was a "very sad situation," referring to the cancer that returned and cost him his life because Brown still seemed free of HIV. Dr. Huetter is now the medical director of a stem cell company in Dresden, Germany.
The International AIDS Society, which had Brown speak at an AIDS conference after his successful treatment, issued a statement after they heard about the news of his death. The statement read that Brown and Huetter are owed a "great deal of gratitude" for promoting research on a cure.
Brown's life
Brown was working in Berlin as a translator when he was diagnosed with HIV and then later, leukemia. Transplants are known to be an effective treatment for the blood cancer, but Huetter wanted to try to cure the HIV infection too by using a donor with a rare gene mutation that gives natural resistance to the AIDS virus.
Brown's first transplant was in 2007, but it was only partly successful. His HIV was gone, but his leukemia was not. In 2008, he had a second transplant from the same donor, and it worked, according to BBC.
However, Brown's cancer returned in 2019. Brown said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that he is still glad that he had the transplant.
Brown said that the transplant opened up doors that were not there before, and it inspired scientists to work harder to find a cure for HIV.
A second man named Adam Castillejo, called "the London patient," is also believed to have been cured by a transplant similar to Brown's in 2016.
Since the donors are rare and the transplants are risky, researchers have been testing gene therapy and other ways to try to get a similar effect.
At an AIDS conference in July 2020, researchers said that they might have achieved a long-term remission in a Brazilian man by using a powerful combination of drugs meant to flush dormant HIV from the patient's body.
Mark King, a blog writer from Baltimore, said that Brown was "just this magnet for people living with HIV." King admitted that he has HIV too and that Brown embodied the hope for a cure.
