A legacy that changed medicine
The scientist who proved cord blood could achieve an HIV cure
Dr. Lawrence Petz, StemCyte's transfusion medicine expert, proposed a bold hypothesis: cord blood, which requires less HLA matching than adult stem cells, could be used to achieve HIV remission through transplantation of units carrying the CCR5Δ32 mutation.
He screened more than 18,000 cord blood units across StemCyte's inventory and partner banks worldwide, identifying over 300 homozygous CCR5Δ32 units — a targeted registry that exists nowhere else in the world.
His work became the foundation of the NIH-backed IMPAACT P1107 study. In 2023, Cell published a landmark case report: the first woman, and first person of mixed race, to achieve HIV-1 remission and possible cure — using a CCR5Δ32 cord blood unit from StemCyte's registry, combined with haploidentical stem cells. She was cancer-free at 55 months and showed no viral rebound 18 months after stopping antiretroviral therapy.
Previously, only two men had achieved HIV remission, both through adult stem cell transplants. Dr. Petz's approach, using cord blood, opened a fundamentally new pathway that may be accessible to far more patients. The Cell paper is dedicated to his memory.
Cell, March 2023 — “HIV-1 remission and possible cure in a woman after haplo-cord blood transplant” 
