(CNN) -- A New York University fertility specialist says he has a new technique that may help an infertile woman conceive a child by adding her genetic material to a donor egg.

The process, called oocyte nuclear transfer, requires removing the nucleus, or genetic material, from both an infertile woman's egg and a donor egg. The nucleus from the infertile woman's egg is then implanted into the now-empty donor egg.

In some infertile women, eggs with healthy DNA are present, but because of defects in the cytoplasm, or fluid around the egg, they cannot have a child.

The reconstructed egg is then fertilized with the father's sperm, and the resulting embryo is put into the womb of the infertile mother.

If a pregnancy occurs, the fetus will technically contain genetic material from three different people.

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Most of the egg's genes will come from the mother's nucleus, and will help determine how a child looks or behaves. However, mitochondrial genes from the donor egg will be passed to the child, too. While they do not determine physical traits, these genes can transmit inherited diseases.

Lead researcher Dr. Jamie Grifo described the procedure Thursday in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

He said purpose of his research is to offer more options to infertile women.

Grifo emphasized that his procedure is still in its experimental phase, and said he will have more to talk about when one of his patients actually gets pregnant.

The university's scientific and ethics advisory board has given Grifo's research team permission to complete the process on five women.

Two women have undergone the procedure: One woman failed to get pregnant; another, who was implanted last week, has not yet been tested to determine if she is pregnant.

The research is expected to raise some ethical questions, but Grifo says his process has nothing to do with cloning.

"There are a lot of concerns about this -- a lot of issues," Grifo said. "But it's not like we did this thoughtlessly."

The procedure is similar to the cloning technique that produced Dolly the sheep. However, in Grifo's technique, a child still needs genes from both a mother and a father to develop.

Medical Correspondent Dr. Steve Salvatore and The Associated Press contributed to this report.