How Hollywood Attorney Kenneth Kleinberg’s Kidney Crisis Fueled A Stem Cell Breakthrough That Puts Synthetic Replacement Kidneys In Sight

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: A founding partner of Kleinberg Lange Cuddy & Carlo and a fixture in the Hollywood legal community for five decades, Kenneth Kleinberg built his practice lawyering the likes of Jack Nicholson, J.K.

Rowling, Johnny Depp, musicians like Toby Keith and brands like Lego, among many others. If you ask the attorney what his ultimate crowning life achievement might be, he hopes it will be the fruition of co-founding the University Kidney Research Organization.

A byproduct of Kleinberg’s own medical woes that ended in a kidney transplant, UKRO has been a catalyst for stem cell-based research that has led to the development of a synthetic kidney its makers believe will not only be ready for transplants inside of a decade, but will also eliminate the body’s natural inclination to reject any replacement organ harvested from another human because it is generated with stem cells from the recipient. “What has already been achieved is extraordinary and when it’s fully perfected, the idea of using stem cells to replicate other organs in the human body opens a whole new area of science and medicine,” Kleinberg told Deadline. “If this is successful and the kidney perfected, it’ll be one of the biggest medical breakthroughs ever, on par with the Salk vaccine for polio.”   Kleinberg believes it will be the most significant recent medical breakthrough since AIDS was turned from a death sentence to a treatable disease.

In a moment where everyone from Hollywood labor unions to its developers are warning of the dangers of AI, the potential results here are staggering.