German scientists have found a new way to prevent HIV from replicating, offering hope in the face of the virus’ increasing resistance to existing drugs.

Joachim Hauber, a professor at the Heinrich-Pette Institute in Hamburg, told AMN Health on Tuesday his team had identified a protein in human cells that HIV uses to reproduce and run tests on a chemical that blocks this protein’s action.

Drugs such as GlaxoSmithKline’s AZT and existing inhibitors produce drug resistance because they work on viral proteins, which can mutate when HIV replicates.

Human cells are much less prone to mutations, so the German researchers believe the cellular protein they have singled out is a promising target for drugs that could avoid creating multiple resistance.

“We have identified a new possibility, but we cannot judge it yet. We are far away from a therapy,” said Hauber, who heads the institute’s department of cell biology and virology.

He added that it typically requires 5 to 10 years from test phases before a drug becomes available.

“It’s not a therapy that will be available tomorrow.”

Hauber, whose findings are published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, said his research team had tested a particular chemical’s action for 12 weeks.

The tests showed it consistently blocked multiplication and had no tendency of HIV to develop any resistance. It also produced no clear toxic side effects, a major problem in the development of medicines to fight HIV/AIDS.

The chemical is an experimental drug, developed by a firm in Pennsylvania, Cytokine PharmaSciences Inc., which is in clinical trials for the treatment of Crohn’s disease, a condition that causes chronic inflammation of the small intestine.

HIV, which infects about 40 million people worldwide, is incurable and leads to AIDS, although a combination of drugs called highly active antiretroviral therapy can suppress it and keep patients healthy for years.

Almost all antiretroviral drugs attack the virus after it has infected the body’s immune system and simply suppress replication, so patients must take the drug for life.