Sun Qiang, director of the non-human primate research facility at the institute, said most of the drug trials are currently done on lab mice. However, drugs that work on mice might not work or even have severe side effects on humans because the two species are so different.

"Monkeys and Humans are both primates, so they are much closely related and testing on Monkeys is supposed to be as effective as testing on humans," he said. This is especially useful in testing drugs for neural diseases such as Parkinson's disease, metabolic and immune system disease, and tumor, he added.

"This achievement will help China lead the world research in an international science projects related to neural mapping of primate brains," he said. However, bio labs from the United States, Japan, and European countries are also very capable, and they will quickly catch up to China after the monkey cloning technology is made public, Sun added.

"This means we have to innovate continuously and work extra harder this year to stay ahead," he said.