A Toronto patient who has been living with HIV for 27 years is in remission – and potentially cured, according to his doctors – after a bone marrow transplant from a donor naturally resistant to the virus.

If he remains in remission for about two and a half years, the 36-year-old will join 10 people in the world currently considered cured of HIV.

The patient was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in November 2021 and needed a bone marrow transplant. His medical team of clinicians at the University Health Network, Unity Health Toronto and the University of Toronto say they saw an opportunity to cure his HIV at the same time, a feat first accomplished in Berlin in 2007, by finding a donor match with a genetic mutation resistant to the virus.

"We feel pretty confident that it's gone, but it's hard for us to say for absolute sure right now that he is cured," said Dr. Sharon Walmsley, director of the HIV Clinic at Toronto General Hospital.