living with his partner Tim Hoeffgen in Palm Springs, Calif., at the time of his death.Brown was in Berlin in 1995 when he was first diagnosed with HIV.
Eleven years later, he was undergoing treatment there related to his HIV when he was also diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, requiring two bone marrow transplants.
His doctor, Gero Hütter, MD, used stem cells from a donor with the rare CCR5-delta32 genetic mutation that blocks HIV from entering cells.After the intense cancer treatment which nearly took his life and left him with lasting complications, Brown was also left with a new immune system resistant to the virus.