Animal testing for a new weight loss drug has gone very well, moving from trials with mice and onto studies involving monkeys. Researchers are now planning to apply for approval through the Food and Drug Administration so that trials on humans can begin. The researchers are hoping that that approval could potentially be given as soon as the coming year.

The drug, comprised of a protein compound called adipotide is thought to target the blood supply that flows to fat cells, depriving them of their food source and killing them. The research, conducted at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas has been described as very successful in relation to specially selected monkeys from a large colony.

The main researchers, a husband and wife team, started their trials of this drug in 2004 giving it to mice in the first run of their testing. That drug gave substantial weight loss in the mice without any changes in their feed or in their exercise habits. In the second phase, the researchers chose monkeys with specific factors and behaviors, trying to get those that acted closest to obese or potentially obese humans as possible. Researchers drew their test animals from the colony based on behaviors like overeating and less movement and activity, the "couch potato" monkey.

The drug, administered daily via injection for twenty eight days allowed the monkeys to lose 11% of their body weight without any changes in diet or exercise. MRI and further testing revealed that most of the weight loss was through the reduction of white body fat, determined to be the more dangerous type of fat. White body fat is associated with an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. That revelation is important because it eliminates water, muscle and other tissue from the weight loss amount.

So far, there have been very few negatives seen with the drug. Most troubling is the news that a slight kidney change was noted and will have to be monitored if FDA approval is given for human trials in the near future. Those kidney changes were described by the research team as slight, non life threatening and reversible.

The drug will not be used as a permanent solution, researchers are warning. Once the monkeys were no longer given their injection, they went right back to their behaviors and started gaining their lost weight within two weeks of the last dose. It is likely that the drug would be most successful as a way to kick off a weight loss plan.