The Man who beats HIV once, dies of cancer

Timothy Ray Brown’s story is the most unfortunate one. Once he was cured of the deadly HIV infection and Leukemia giving millions of HIV-infected a ray of hope but in battle with relapsed cancer, he failed.

Brown was diagnosed with HIV while he was studying in Berlin in 1995, later he was also diagnosed with Leukemia. Initially, He was dubbed ‘’Berlin patient” to hide his identity. Then the doctor who treats him at the Free University of Berlin did a stem cell transplant on him. The stem cell has a rare genetic mutation that gave him natural resistance to HIV.

In 2008 he was declared free of two deadly diseases. And then he broke his silence and went on to become a public figure, giving speeches and interviews and starting his own foundation.

"I am living proof that there could be a cure for AIDS," he told AFP in 2012. "It's very wonderful, being cured of HIV."

Ten years after Brown’s recovery, a second HIV victim was cured using the same procedure. Her name first dubbed “London patient” is Adam Castillejo. Sharon Lewin, the president-elect of the IAS and director of the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia, praised Brown as a "champion and advocate" of a cure for HIV.

"It is the hope of the scientific community that one day we can honor his legacy with a safe, cost-effective, and widely accessible strategy to achieve HIV remission and curs using gene edition or techniques that boost immune control," she said.