At the 29th annual meeting of retrovirus and opportunistic infection in February last year, American scientists announced the first female AIDS "healer" case. Cell magazine published on the 16th shared all the treatment details of the "New York patient". Scientists believe that the new method of transplanting stem cells from umbilical cord blood to cure AIDS has achieved long-term good results. The "Berlin patient" was the first AIDS patient "cured" in 2009. Later, two other men, the "London patient" and the "Dusseldorf patient", have also been rid of the virus. All three people received stem cell transplants as part of cancer treatment, and the donor cells were all derived from carrying two CCR5s Δ A compatible or "matched" copy of a 32 mutation in adults, which is a natural mutation that can prevent the virus from entering and infecting cells. However, CCR5 Δ Homozygotes with 32 mutations are very rare in a broad population. This rarity severely limits the likelihood of successful stem cell transplantation because this method requires a "strong match" between the donor and the recipient. "New York patient" is a middle-aged woman who claims to be a mixed race child and suffers from leukemia and AIDS at the same time. After knowing that it was almost impossible to find a compatible adult donor, the UCLA team switched to transplanting CCR5 from stored umbilical cord blood Δ 32/ Δ 32 stem cells, trying to cure her cancer and AIDS at the same time. The surgery injects umbilical cord blood cells with stem cells from a patient's relative to increase the chance of success. Transplantation has successfully alleviated both AIDS and leukemia, and this remission has lasted for more than 4 years. 37 months after transplantation, the patient stopped taking AIDS antiviral drugs. Since she stopped antiviral treatment, she has been tested negative for AIDS virus for more than 30 months. Using CCR5 Δ 32/ Δ The 32 cell stem cell transplantation provides a two in one treatment for patients with AIDS and blood cancer. So far, all relevant successful treatment cases have used this mutant cell population. In the research of transplanting new stem cells, cells without this mutation still cannot cure AIDS. [Editor in Chief] Nearly 38 million people around the world are infected with AIDS. Although antiviral treatment is effective, it must take drugs for life. At present, stem cell transplantation is the most popular method, but it has another problem - the prevalence of AIDS virus is diverse in race, while the mutant gene is not. Therefore, it is very difficult for people of more races to find a fully matched adult donor. This time scientists used umbilical cord blood cells to broaden the cure opportunities for AIDS infected people of different blood lineages. However, it should be noted that before patients receive transplantation, they also need chemotherapy or radiotherapy to destroy their existing immune system, so this method cannot be used to cure AIDS alone, but only for people suffering from AIDS and blood cancer at the same time. (Liao Xinshe)