Orthopedics as a field has advanced dramatically over the past few decades. We can now replace hips and reconstruct knees with impressive precision. Yet when it comes to restoring structural tissues like ligaments and tendons [the tissues that transmit nearly every force that allows us to move] the field still relies on grafts taken from a patient’s own body or from donors.
That’s because these load bearing tissues are mechanically unforgiving and biologically slow to heal. With limited supply and variable performance across cases, standardized implants struggle. Regenerative medicine has long promised something better, but it starts with a fundamental bottleneck: manufacturing.
That is why we are excited to announce Outset’s investment in Klona Biotech.
Bioprinting has made meaningful progress in recent years. Researchers can print soft tissues, cellular constructs, and hydrogel scaffolds with increasing sophistication; but load bearing structural tissues remain largely unsolved. Ligaments, tendons, fibrocartilage, and heart valves are not soft, isotropic materials. They are tissues that are fiber aligned and mechanically demanding. They must withstand continuous tensile forces and repetitive loading across years. Most commercial bioprinters today extrude just hydrogels, and hydrogels alone cannot replicate the tensile strength or directional architecture required for these kinds of applications.
Printing structural tissue presents a fundamentally different engineering problem, and Klona is building the first manufacturing layer to solve it.
Structural tissue damage drives a large share of global disability. ACL tears alone account for hundreds of thousands of procedures annually just in the U.S. Beyond the ACL, ligament and tendon injuries, meniscus degeneration, and cardiovascular structural failure represent multi-billion dollar markets that continue to grow with aging and active populations.
Yet standards of care have not fundamentally changed. Surgeons still have to choose between autografts (tissue taken from the patient’s own body), allografts (tissue taken from a donor), or synthetic options which often struggle with durability and biological incorporation.
At the core of orthopedic medicine is the absence of a scalable way to manufacture mechanically competent, anatomically tailored implants; on-site and on demand.
Klona is developing a bioprinting platform uniquely built to manufacture structural tissues out of high strength biomaterial composites. The system holds a printhead mounted on an advanced multi-axis motion platform, resulting in implants successfully engineered for tensile strength and repeatable mechanical performance. This platform aims to integrate into existing surgical workflows by being available onsite in hospitals.
Klona is not building just a single device; they are building a capability that cannot be found in today’s orthopedic implant heavyweights like Stryker ($150B market cap) and Zimmer Biomet ($25B).
Klona’s team is unlocking manufacturing capability at the difficult intersection of materials science, tissue engineering, and regulatory strategy. Together, they are tackling the hardest mechanical category that many in their field have avoided.
Cofounders Dylan and Thomas met during their post-graduate studies at Oxford and Imperial College London. Dylan, a Christchurch native, brings a medical research background in musculoskeletal tissue engineering and leads clinical and regulatory strategy. Thomas brings advanced robotics and manufacturing expertise, leading the design and build of the Klotho system. Founding tissue engineer, Dr. Anne Behre, adds deep experience in regenerative construct validation coming from the Feinberg Lab at Carnegie Mellon. The team is currently based in New York City.
At Outset, we back deep technology addressing large, enduring markets, led by founders who understand both the science and the system they are entering. Klona sits squarely at the intersection of advanced manufacturing and regenerative medicine within an already huge market.
Outset is proud to back Klona Biotech as they work to bring onsite bioprinting to every operating room, trauma bay, and surgical suite.