Scientists presenting at an international AIDS conference in Australia have revealed a way to target and reactivate HIV in hibernation.

The discovery is a step closer to treatment of the virus, according to Reuters.

The virus hides in cells called CD4 cells, which are part of the immune system but unable to fight like T-cells. If the virus hidden in CD4 cells is activated, though, the T-cells will know to attack.

A U.S. biotech firm, Celgene, has developed a drug that can reactivate the virus.

"There is still a long way to go and many obstacles to overcome before we can start talking about a cure against HIV," said Ole Schmeltz Sogaard, who led the research team from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, in a statement to Reuters. "We have now shown that we can activate a hibernating virus with romidepsin and that the activated virus moves into the bloodstream in large amounts."

The Danish team injected HIV patients who were on antiretroviral medication three times, once each week, with the romidepsin and determined that a patient's "viral load" could be detected after.

The antiretroviral pills alone help contain the virus, but are not able to detect it in hibernation, according to Bloomberg.

About 35 million people have HIV worldwide, according to Bloomberg who cited the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. Of those, 13.9 million are on antiretroviral therapy.

Sharon Lewin, co-chair of the AIDS2014 conference in Melbourne told Reuters the findings were encouraging because "we can wake up the virus reservoir and make enough of (it) to leave the cell, making it visible to an immune response."

The next step, according to the Danish team, is to start experimental trials on a vaccine that will help T-cells fight the virus.

They hope to achieve this by combining the Celgene drug with a vaccine being developed by Norwegian biotech firm Bionor Pharma called Vacc-4x.