“…Treatment of the mouse myoblast cell line C2C12 (Katagiri et al, 1994; Akiyama et al, 1997) and muscle satellite cells isolated from adult mice (Asakura et al, 2001), with bone morphogenetic protein‐2 ( BMP‐2), inhibits myotube formation and induces the expression of osteocalcin and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, changing the differentiation pathway of C2C12 and satellite cells into the osteoblastic lineage. Interestingly, ALP levels are increased in several muscular diseases (Kara, 1994; Amthor et al, 1996; Brunelli, 2001) and animal models for skeletal muscle dystrophy (Kirkeby and Moe, 1985). Our group and other authors have studied microenvironmental changes in the skeletal muscle of the mdx mouse, an animal model homologous to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Allamand and Campbell, 2000), and observed important increases in the amount of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteoglycans present at the endomysium and perimysium (Caceres et al, 2000).…”