[2][3] Brown was called "The Berlin Patient" at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, where his cure was first announced, in order to preserve his anonymity.

"[4][2][5] Timothy Ray Brown was born in Seattle, Washington, on March 11, 1966, and raised in the area by his single mother, Sharon, who worked for the King County sheriff's department.

On February 7, 2007, he underwent a procedure known as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation to treat leukemia[8] (performed by a team of doctors in Berlin, Germany, including Gero Hütter).

[10] Levels of HIV-specific antibodies in Timothy Brown's blood also declined, suggesting that functional HIV may have been eliminated from his body.

[11] Brown, the "Berlin patient", suffered from serious transplant complications, graft-versus-host disease and leukoencephalopathy, which led researchers to conclude that the procedure should not be performed on others with HIV, even if sufficient numbers of suitable donors could be found.