Lay summary
Nearly 17% of New Zealanders suffer from osteoarthritis, causing significant amount of pain, disability and economic burden ($3.2billion/year). The gold standard clinical treatment remains harvesting a portion of the patient’s own tissue, which is limited by availability and/or incomplete healing. The emerging field of 3D-bioprinting herein holds great promise to address these challenges by allowing the layer-by-layer placement of cell-laden hydrogels, so called bioinks, in order to manufacture customised replacement tissues with hierarchal 3D-complexity. The oxygen availability within these 3D-bioprinted constructs is, however, mainly present by diffusion, arguably remaining the biggest challenge in the field as oxygen is key to survival of most organs in our body. In this project, we aim to develop oxygen carrying bioinks for sophisticated oxygen delivery and functional regeneration of tissues. This project will aid the vision to alleviate current issues faced in shortage of personalised orthopaedic replacement grafts for healing of common joint defects.