University of Wisconsin researchers have discovered a new drug that could help protect people against the avian flu virus.

The drug is a peptide that can be used to prevent the influenza virus from affecting the cells of a human body, and its effects were published Wednesday in the Journal of Virology.

Curtis Brandt, UW professor of medical microbiology and immunology and co-author of the study, said researchers have solved part of the "puzzle" in the fight against influenza.

"The importance of it is that if it gets to the point of use in humans, it could be an arsenal in the fight against influenza," Brandt said in an interview.

But Stacey Schultz-Cherry, senior author of the report and also a UW medical microbiology and immunology professor, told The Badger Herald the research is still in its basic stage.

"This gives us — a long time down the road — a new class of antiviral," Schultz-Cherry said. "It's important to emphasize this is basic research."

Brandt, though, said this discovery is different than anything that has previously been released.

"It stops [the flu virus] from sticking to the cells," he said. "That's a different part of it than any other antiviral."

The peptide, Schultz-Cherry said, is a piece of the protein that prevents the virus from getting in and affect the body's cells. It literally binds to cells in the human body, not allowing influenza to infect the cells.

Schultz-Cherry said she and the other researchers were pretty surprised at the results of the study.

"I was really skeptical why this protein works," she added. "We wondered how this would work."

At this point, Brandt said the project has to go in two different directions, including getting a detailed description on how the drug is working and trying to move the research forward in the drug development process.

In addition, Brandt said they have to move forward and eventually begin testing the drug in humans.

"If we have enough money, we would be [testing on humans] in four to five years," he added.

However, there is still plenty to learn about the peptide, Brandt said, and one of the next areas researchers will be working on is finding out how exactly it works.

In the meantime, Schultz-Cherry credited her students with much of the success of the research thus far.

"My graduate students have been working on this for a couple of years," she said. "They kept going and kept going."

UW graduate student Jeremy Jones was instrumental in investigating the peptide, Schultz-Cherry said, adding that this type of discovery is encouraging for graduate and undergraduate students who are working to conduct successful research.

"It's great for students to be involved," Schultz-Cherry said. "Hopefully this will make Jeremy's career."

Despite the "ups and downs" of medical research, Schultz-Cherry added students should keep persevering in their research, hopefully drawing inspiration from this latest study.