For more than a decade, doctors and researchers have announced that a handful of people around the world have been cured of HIV. Each of these patients has experienced long-term viral control — in some cases for over a decade — without antiretroviral therapy (ART), as AIDSMap notes, though some doctors describe them as being in “remission.”

While the patients have shown no signs of HIV since stopping ART, at least some uncertainty remains as to whether the virus could eventually rebound in them. However, according to Healio, since any viral rebound would likely have occurred within weeks or months, many experts are more than comfortable describing these patients as cured.

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At the same time, experts caution that these are extremely rare and specific cases. Each patient received a stem cell transplant to treat either leukemia or lymphoma, an extreme and invasive procedure that poses its own risks. As Dr. Björn Jensen, a senior consultant at Düsseldorf University Hospital, told NPR in 2024, patients frequently do not survive the aftermath of the procedure, and in the case of those who have been cured of HIV, the transplants were only attempted because they were the only options left to treat them.

Nearly all of these patients also received transplants from donors with the CCR5-delta-32 mutation, a genetic mutation that makes it impossible for HIV to enter their immune cells. The CCR5-delta-32 mutation is extremely rare — according to NPR, it has been found in only 1% of the population — and has only been identified in people of northern European descent. As such, experts warn that this treatment model does not represent a feasible cure for the vast majority of people living with HIV around the world.

Still, several of the people described below are participating in research that may one day lead to a cure. As Dr. Christian Gaebler of the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin told Healio in 2024, “By learning from the cases, it gives us a chance to hopefully translate them into a more scalable approach.”

Timothy Ray Brown

Prior to speaking out publicly toward the end of 2010, American Timothy Ray Brown was referred to as “the Berlin Patient.” Brown, who was HIV-positive, was living in the German capital when, in 2007, he received the first of two stem cell transplants to treat leukemia.

As AIDSMap notes, his donor had double copies of CCR5-delta-32, which researchers found rebuilt his immune system to resist HIV. Brown was ultimately able to stop antiretroviral therapy (ART) without his viral load rebounding.

While he reportedly suffered severe complications, Brown lived a further 14 years after his first transplant with no sign of his HIV returning. In 2019, Brown’s leukemia returned, and he died in September 2020 at just 54 years old.

Adam Castillejo

Initially known as “the London Patient,” Adam Castillejo was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2003. Like Brown, he received a stem cell transplant from a donor with CCR5-delta-32 to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2016, and like Brown, that transplant replaced his immune system with one is resistant to HIV.

After revealing his identity in 2020, Castillejo described months spent in the hospital, hearing and weight loss, and other grueling side effects that followed in the year after his transplant.

But, as the New York Times reported, in October 2017, he was able to stop ART and, in March 2019, one of his doctors, Ravindra Gupta, announced that he had been cured.

Marc Franke

March 2019 also saw the announcement that a third HIV-positive patient who had received a similar stem cell transplant in 2013 was in “remission.”

In early 2023, after nearly a decade of testing and more than four years after he stopped ART, researchers announced that Marc Franke, then known as “the Düsseldorf patient,” had been cured.

In 2024, Franke described to NPR the “debilitating” process, which included immunosuppressant drugs that led to liver inflammation, loss of bone density, and a herpes infection that spread to his brain.

“The New York Patient”

The first woman to be described as cured of HIV was announced in February 2022. Known only as “the New York patient,” she received a different kind of stem cell transplant to treat leukemia than previous patients, according to AIDSMap.

Her case is also unique in that while her donor also possessed the CCR5-delta-32 mutation, the fact that she is mixed-race made it necessary to supplement her treatment with cells from a relative who did not have the mutation.

Paul Edmonds

In April 2023, Paul Edmonds identified himself as “the City of Hope Patient” who had been first announced as being “cured of HIV” two years prior.

According to USA Today, he had been living with HIV for more than 30 years when he received a stem cell transplant to treat his leukemia at the City of Hope cancer treatment and research center in California. He went off ART in 2021.

In his 60s at the time, Edmonds is the oldest person to be cured of HIV and had lived with the disease longer than any other. Along with Castillejo and Franke, Edmonds has agreed to participate in Oregon scientist Jonah Sacha and his team’s research into finding a more scalable cure for HIV.

“The Geneva Patient”

In July 2023, researchers announced another potential breakthrough. They described the case of “the Geneva Patient,” a French-Swiss man who experienced HIV remission after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who, unlike in every other case, did not possess the CCR5-delta-32 mutation.

According to AIDSMap, following the transplant, the patient — later identified only as Romuald — experienced graft-versus-host disease (a condition in which a transplant recipient’s body is attacked by the donor’s immune cells, which recognize the recipient’s tissues as foreign). He was then treated with ruxolitinib, a medication that has been shown to reduce patients’ HIV reservoir (long-living, resting immune cells that harbor latent HIV DNA).

“The Next Berlin Patient”

A seventh patient, who has not publicly identified themself, was reported in 2024. As Healio noted at the time, this case of the then-60-year-old German man brought another twist in the search for a cure.

Every other patient cured of HIV, besides the Geneva Patient, received a stem cell transplant from a donor with two copies of the CCR5-delta-32 mutation — that is, both their parents had the mutation.

“The Next Berlin Patient” as Dr. Christian Gaebler and his team have referred to the man, received stem cells from a donor with only one copy. However, the patient himself had a single copy of CCR5-delta-32, which Gaebler has said may account for his ability to remain HIV-free since stopping ART in 2018.

The Eighth and Ninth Patients

Last March, physicians in Chicago and Oslo reported two more cases in which patients had been cured of HIV. Both received stem cell transplants from donors with CCR5-delta-32, but each is unique in their own way.

The patient described by Dr. Paul Rubinstein of the University of Illinois at Chicago is the first to see a recurrence of HIV after stopping ART post-transplant, but who was able to achieve sustained remission after going back on treatment for a two-year period.

The “Oslo Patient,” meanwhile, is the first to experience remission following a transplant from a sibling. Notably, the Oslo Patient did not inherit the CCR5-delta-32 mutation, but his brother, who was his donor, did, according to Healio.

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