TOPLINE Timothy Ray Brown, initially introduced to the world as “the Berlin patient” and the first known person whose HIV was cured, died at his California home at age 54 of cancer. Timothy Ray Brown at the launch of the Timothy Ray [+] GETTY IMAGES KEY FACTS Brown died Tuesday with his friends by his side after battling leukemia for the past five months, his partner Tim Hoeffgen posted on Brown’s Facebook page. It was Brown’s first bout with cancer in 2007 that inadvertently led to his HIV being cured—he received a bone marrow transplant from a donor that carried the CCR5 gene, a rare genetic mutation that is believed to provide resistance to HIV as part of his leukemia treatment. After two transplants, doctors found that besides curing his cancer, the treatment appeared to have also eliminated detectable traces of HIV in Brown’s blood, and could stop taking medication that suppressed the virus. The success of Brown’s treatment was first released to the public in 2008 but kept
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