The Wall Street Journal’s Mark Schoofs is one of the best AIDS reporters I know. He just wrote a fascinating update on the so-called “Berlin patient” -- potentially the first person “cured” of HIV/AIDS.

The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.

The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.

“I was very surprised,” said the doctor, Gero Hütter.