A research team at the Oregon National Primate Research Center had reported a technical breakthrough, according to The Independent, on Monday. They have succeeded to clone for the first time embryos from adult monkeys, by deriving embryonic stem cells from a blastocyst, through somatic cell transfer.

The development might bring scientists one step further in human cloning.

The research team is expected to reveal the results of the experiment in the journal Nature, leaving the world to wonder which could be the exact details of the research.

Until then, they declared that they had produced dozens of cloned embryos from a 10-year-old adult macaque monkey, using a technology that does not damage the egg cells. Some of the extracted stem cells from the embryos were grown into test tubes, resulting into specialized cells of the nervous system and the heart.

The Independent has reported that Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the leader of the research group, has been the first who developed a system of handling primate eggs that protects them during the cloning process.

If the experiment proves to be successful, it would be the first documented cloning of a primate, after the rejection of fraudulent claims of human cloning by South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, last year.

The next step would be the human cloning, subject that had raised a lot of enthusiasm, but also many critics, especially regarding ethic problems. However, scientists had reaffirmed that their interest with primates is only in “therapeutic cloning,” meaning the creation and then destruction of an embryo, without implanting it into a womb and allowing it to come to full gestation.

British scientists had praised the breakthrough, even if the work has not been yet published, saying that it might be the most important step in the study of cloning.