The title of this article is even worse, ~10% of people of European descent are resistant to HIV and 10% of those individuals are practically immune to HIV. The mutation is more common in people of northern European descent and some eastern European ethnic groups, like Ashkenazi Jews.
This summary of a paper published in Nature shows that mice with the CCR5 delta32 mutation still get the plague. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_... Subscription/university tunnel required for the real paper.
This is another study concluding that smallpox was the more likely selecting factor for the mutation. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=29... http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=12...
This is a personal interest of mine because testing for this mutation is my startup. http://www.hivgene.com There's an enormous amount of untapped potential with the CCR5 receptor; I wish I had the money to do private research.
To cure HIV: Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.
To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.
(HIV curing idea is courtesy of my partner, his username is ingenium on here. If anyone with money is interested in branching out into a different kind of biotech company, please get in touch with me.)