Chip company Nvidia buys Israeli Mellanox for $6.9 billion
The US graphics card specialist Nvidia announced on Sunday that it would buy the Israeli chip designer Mellanox Technologies for 6.8 billion US dollars. Nvidia outbid its competitor Intel in the auction. The deal is Nvidia's largest acquisition and should give the company
There is still hope for HIV. A third patient, referred to as the “Düsseldorf patient”, is now said to have been cured of the deadly HIV virus. The patient shows no signs of HIV after three months without antiviral drugs, doctors said.
The case was reported at a scientific conference in Seattle this week, but doctors said her remission was still in the early stages.
This announcement comes just two days after researchers reported another case of a possible HIV cure from London. The “London patient” has not been taking HIV medication for 19 months.
Reading Festival 1992: Kurt Cobain's hospital shirt is auctioned off
Kurt Cobain's hospital shirt from Nirvana's performance at the 1992 Reading Festival is up for auction. Fans with plenty of disposable income can bid on this cool collectible on the RR Auction website until March 14th. The auction house RR Auction estimates the value of the piece at around $50,000.
The cases in Düsseldorf and London have strong similarities: both patients underwent bone marrow transplants as part of their cancer treatment and received cells from donors with the rare mutation of the CCR5 gene. The genetic mutation of CCR5 naturally makes the donor resistant to HIV.
Both cases followed the precedent of the “Berlin Patient,” who was the first person cured of HIV in 2007. As part of his treatment from theDisease leukemia, a cancer of the immune system, his immune cells were destroyed and replaced with donor cells with the mutation. It had the effect of also making him free of HIV, a virus known to attack cells in the immune system. Since his transplant, the Berlin patient has been virus-free for 12 years.
The two most recent cases are part of the IciStem program, a collaboration of researchers and doctors dedicated to finding a cure for HIV. Other IciStem HIV patients have also received similar bone marrow transplants while undergoing cancer treatment, but they have not yet stopped taking the antiviral medications.
