Researchers have found that a protein called SAMHD1 makes cells resistant to the deadly HIV virus by making HIV starve in cells.

Researchers at New York University’s Langone Medical Center believe that their research could help develop new treatment aimed at halting or slowing the HIV's conversion into AIDS.

Research co-leader, Nathaniel R. Landau, PhD, said, “A lot of research on viruses, especially HIV, is aimed at trying to understand what the body's mechanisms of resistance are and then to understand how the virus has gotten around these mechanisms.”

Landau and colleagues found that the dendritic cells with SAMHD1 protein were resistant to HIV infection. The research team also aimed to find why this protein made cells resistant to the infection. Dendritic cells that firm the immune system of the body, process antigen material and offer it on the surface of other immune system cells.

Viruses cannot replicate on their own but they take over cell's molecular material to replicate. SAMHD1 stop this process by starving the virus in the cell. When the virus inters the cell, there is nothing to replicate and nothing happens because of the protein.

The authors said that if researchers re able to explain how SAMHD1 protects cells then new treatments could be developed to create a cure for the infection.