Treatments for chronic hepatitis B have come a long way in the past decade with the development of powerful nucleoside analogs that target the polymerase of the virus.However, with the continued use of these agents, virus resistance has emerged, and efforts are now underway to develop combination therapies the will circumvent resistance and provide long term suppression of virus replication and disease.One approach is to combine existing treatments, but another approach will be to seek out drugs to other virus encoded targets.Accordingly, drugs are now under development that disrupt the formation of virus nucleocapsid particles (HBcAg), which house virus replication complexes during infection.Another putative virus encoded target is the X protein (HBx).HBx stimulates virus gene expression and replication, contributes importantly to the development and progression of chronic liver disease, and is the virus contribution to hepatocellular carcinoma.Future therapies for HBV will not specifically aim to cure the virus, but follow the path successfully taken for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) by mediating long term suppression of virus replication and chronic liver disease.