Wednesday, July 9, 2014

PCR confirms that the Mississippi Baby has indeed rebounded with virus at 16,000 and 10,000 copies RNA per ml. Baby has been off cART for 27 months and is 46 months of age. Disappointing, but raises many questions. The baby had no detectable immune response for these many months. Since the virus was obviously there in a reservoir somewhere, what then was the mechanisms that was preventing it from rebounding. Will hold press conference with Deb Persaud, Hannah Gay, and Katherine Luzuriaga on Thursday (tomorrow). Had interesting rounds today to see our first patient (Phil Diers) that received an allogeneic PBMC transfer from a HLA-B27 HIV-infected Elite Controller donor. Recipient has CD4+ T cell count of 0-4 and >150,000 copies of HIV on cART (resistant virus). Hope is that the immune response of donor cells will impact in some way the infected cells of the recipient. More to come. Way out chance of a graft versus infected cell effect that might eliminate reservoir (too much to ask for). See picture below of me on Rounds the day after the allogeneic transfer.