Hollywood Attorney's Kidney Crisis Sparks Synthetic Replacement Breakthrough.

Hollywood attorney Kenneth Kleinberg, who co-founded the University Kidney Research Organization (UKRO) after receiving a kidney transplant, is now pushing for funding to develop a synthetic kidney using stem cells. The synthetic kidney, generated by the patient's own stem cells, would eliminate the body's natural inclination to reject any replacement organ harvested from another human being. The project is being led by Zhongwei Li, a PH.D and lead researcher on the Synthetic Kidney Project in the USC/UKRO Research Center, and human clinical trials are a few years away, with the hope of generating synthetic kidneys for transplant into humans within a decade.