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A simple medication that leads to weight loss with no dieting or exercise is every dieter’s dream. The medication has currently only been tried on monkeys, but tests in people could begin shortly.

NBC is reporting Researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston gave monkeys a drug, a protein compound called adipotide. The drug is a synthetic peptide that slow downs blood supply. The strategy has been employed in several cancer drugs and works by targeting the blood supply to fat cells and kills them; robbed of their blood supply, fat deposits shed fat cells. The study found that after only 28 daily injections of the drug the monkeys lost an average of 11 percent of their body weight.

Researchers Wadih Arap and Renata Pasqualini have been working on the project for years. In 2004 the team confirmed the drug could trigger extensive weight loss in mice. Now, after the highly successful results in monkeys, they have applied for FDA approval to begin trials in people, and believe they could begin trials within the next year.

“It is incredibly exciting, a dream coming true in slow motion,” says Arap.

In the results reported yesterday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the scientists said they did not use monkeys that were made genetically obese or forced to become fat in some other way.

They chose the animals in the colony that usually ate more and exercised less.

Read more about the research.