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By AP 
14h ago
Timothy Ray Brown, who made history as “the Berlin patient,” the first person known to be cured of HIV infection, has died. He was 54 years old.
Brown died Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs, California, according to a social media post from his partner, Tim Hoeffgen. The cause was the return of the cancer that originally caused Brown’s rare bone marrow and stem cell transplants in 2007 and 2008, which for years appeared to have eliminated both his leukemia and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“Timothy symbolized that it is possible, under special circumstances,” to rid a patient of HIV, something many scientists had doubted could be done, said Dr. Gero Huetter, the Berlin physician who led Brown’s landmark treatment.
“It’s a very sad situation” that the cancer came back and took his life, because he still appeared to be free of HIV, said Huetter, who is now 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, released a statement mourning his death and said he and Huetter have “great gratitude” for promoting research on a cure.
Brown was working in Berlin as a translator when he was diagnosed with HIV and then leukemia. Transplants are known to be an effective treatment for blood cancer, but Huetter also wanted to try to cure HIV infection by using a donor with a rare genetic mutation that gives him natural resistance to the AIDS virus.
Brown’s first transplant in 2007 was only partially successful: His HIV seemed to be gone, but his leukemia was not. He had a second transplant from the same donor in 2008 and that one seemed to work.
But her cancer returned last year, Brown said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
“I’m still glad I had it,” she said of her transplant.
“It opened doors that didn’t exist before” and inspired scientists to work harder to find a cure, Brown said.
A second man, Adam Castillejo, called “the London patient” until he revealed his identity earlier this year, is believed to have also been cured with a transplant similar to Brown’s in 2016.
Because these donors are rare and transplants carry a medical risk, researchers have been testing gene therapy and other ways to try to get a similar effect. At an AIDS conference in July, researchers said they may have achieved long-term remission in a Brazilian man by using a powerful combination of drugs aimed at eliminating latent HIV from his body.
Mark King, a Baltimore man who writes a blog, said that Brown “was just a magnet for people living with HIV, like me,” and embodied hope for a cure.
“He’s said from the beginning, ‘I don’t want to be the only one. They have to keep working on this, ‘”King said.
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