| | | | |  | | By Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne, Erin Schumaker, Ruth Reader and Toni Odejimi | | | | |  A man cured of AIDS could offer hope for future patients. | Aijaz Rahi/AP | A German man who underwent a stem cell transplant for blood cancer may be the seventh person in the world to have been cured of HIV, a scientist who worked on his case said. The man, who chose to remain anonymous, was nicknamed the second Berlin patient. The first Berlin patient, announced in 2008, was the first person ever cured of HIV, also through a transplant for blood cancer. How so? The second Berlin patient had both leukemia and HIV. He received a stem cell transplant for the blood cancer in 2015. Three years later, he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs to treat his HIV. Almost six years later, he remains in remission, said Dr. Christian Gaebler, a professor at Charité-Berlin University Medicine. The six other people cured before him received similar transplants for leukemia. What makes the second Berlin patient different from the others is that his stem cell donor had one copy of a gene mutation which, when present in two copies, essentially makes those people immune to HIV. Five of the six other people considered cured of HIV received cells from donors with two copies, NBC reports. A sixth one — the so-called Geneva patient — received cells from a donor who didn’t have any mutation. That’s encouraging to scientists since it potentially enlarges the donor base. Around 16 percent of Europeans have one copy of the mutation, compared with 1 percent who have both copies, Gaebler said. Even so: While all indications are that the transplant resulted in a cure, Gaebler said scientists cannot say with 100 percent certainty that HIV could not return. What’s next? Gaebler will present the case study at the 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich, Germany, this week.
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Rock Isle Lake, Canada | Shawn Zeller/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Cocaine sharks were the subject of a particularly far-fetched horror movie last year — but animal exposure to cocaine pollution is real, Science reports. Researchers in Brazil found traces of the narcotic in small sharks living in the coastal waters near Rio de Janeiro. It remains unclear whether the drug affects the animals’ behavior. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com, or Toni Odejimi at aodejimi@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  Stanford is examining how to use AI in health care. | Ben Margot/AP | The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines could offer clues for how regulators, drug developers and providers could steer the future of advanced artificial intelligence in health care. That’s according to Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of Stanford University Medical School and an executive sponsor of Stanford’s Responsible AI for Safe and Equitable Health initiative. “Are there other examples that could be deployed based upon that model of meaningful interaction and partnership among regulators and industry and academia? We should be looking for what we can learn from that,” Minor told Daniel. To that end, Minor and his colleagues at Stanford are trying to convene stakeholders and serve as a trusted source of information. The challenge: Scientific, regulatory and medical roadmaps for vaccine development already existed when Operation Warp Speed set out to do something that had been done before — but at a much faster rate and in response to a novel pathogen. Harnessing the power of AI in health care will be more challenging than developing the Covid vaccine in some ways, Minor said. Industry, academia and government are just now beginning to understand where advanced AI might be useful in health care — and only then can oversight and quality assurance frameworks be developed. “There are specific areas where we’ll have [an Operation Warp Speed]-like approach because we have a roadmap for how to do it,” Minor said. “But by and large, I think those roadmaps are still at the very earliest stages of being developed.” Even so: AI is quickly being deployed in health care, even amid uncertainty about what rules governments will implement to protect patients without stifling innovation.
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, our newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRI | | | | | | | | |  How the heart and the brain work in tandem is the subject of Wake Forest research. | Carsten Koall/Getty Images | A $27 million grant from the NIH’s National Institute on Aging is helping researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine study the connection between heart and brain health in diverse populations. The five-year grant funds MESA-MIND, a program with roots in the NIH-sponsored 1999 Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or MESA, program, which examined cardiovascular disease risk factors among more than 6,800 healthy participants between ages 45 and 84 of European, African, Hispanic and Chinese descent. Early undetectable changes in vascular function and structure might hinder brain vessels’ ability to clear Alzheimer’s-related blood proteins, according to Timothy Hughes, principal investigator and associate professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest. “With this additional funding support from the NIA, we will further study the role heart and vascular factors play in developing brain abnormalities common in aging and Alzheimer’s disease that lead to cognitive impairment and dementia,” Hughes said in a statement. “We are especially interested in studying these risk factor differences in racially and ethnically diverse groups who are at higher risk for both Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and cardiovascular disease.” Why it matters: While there’s a well-established link between cardiovascular disease and dementia later in life, researchers still don’t know exactly how the two are linked. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6.7 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, last year. That number is projected to rise to 14 million people by 2060, the CDC says. What’s next? The Wake Forest team plans to collaborate with 17 institutions to conduct the research, including six in the U.S. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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