Fred Hutch researchers have launched a clinical trial for patients with HIV who need a transplant to survive advanced leukemia. They will receive a transplant of cord blood from donors who have a rare genetic trait that confers resistance to HIV, in hopes of curing both leukemia and HIV. The protocol is similar to that used in 2017 with a New York patient who last month was declared the third person ever cured of HIV.
A team lead by Fred Hutch physician-scientist Dr. Marie Bleakley has shown it can dramatically reduce chronic GVHD, a common debilitating side effect of stem cell transplantation in leukemia patients, using magnets to remove “naïve T cells” from the mixture of blood cells from a donor that are to be transplanted into the patient.