Narrator:       This is Science Today. A new Food and Drug Administration regulatory approval program has selected a University of California-led effort to create an artificial kidney as one of the first projects to undergo a more timely and efficient review process. Bioengineer Shuvo Roy of UC San Francisco is leading a nationwide team of researchers to develop an artificial kidney that could take the place of kidney transplantation.

Roy:              Our device is designed to work more like a kidney than a dialysis machine and what I mean by that is, we studied how the kidney itself processes toxins in your body and we've tried to mimic that.

Narrator:       Their device combines nano-scale engineering with the most recent advances in cellular biology and Roy says this knowledge may someday lead to a number of applications.

Roy:               We can think in terms of other organs: an artificial liver, an artificial pancreas. So we're developing some of the key platform knowledge that will be applicable to a wide array of bio-hybrid organs.