“…It is furthermore questionable whether the mechanisms of osteoinduction by BMPs and osteoinduction by inorganic biomaterials are related and, if so, to which extent. The apparent differences between osteoinduction by BMPs and biomaterials are that (1) bone induced by biomaterials is always intramembranous (Ripamonti, 1991;Yuan et al, 2002) while BMP-induced bone is mostly formed via the endochondral pathway (Reddi, 1981), (2) in small animals like rodents bone is very rarely induced by synthetic biomaterials (Ohgushi et al, 1989;Ohgushi et al, 1993;Klein et al, 1994;Yang et al, 1996;Yuan et al, 2006b), but easily by BMPs (Reddi, 1992;Reddi, 1994;Wozney, 1998), (3) bone induction by biomaterials in large animals is rather slow, requiring weeks to months (Gosain et al, 2002;Fujibayashi et al, 2004;Habibovic et al, 2005;Habibovic et al, 2006c;Ripamonti et al, 2010), whereas osteoinduction by BMP-2 and BMP-7 takes place as early as 2-3 weeks upon heterotopic implantation in rodents (Ono et al, 1995;Liu et al, 2005;Kato et al, 2006) and (4) while bone is usually observed inside pores or other "protective" areas of a material Habibovic et al, 2005;Le Nihouannen et al, 2005;Habibovic et al, 2008b), bone formation by BMPs is regularly seen on the periphery of the carrier and even in the soft tissue distant from the carrier surface (Yuan et al, 2001d;Liu et al, 2005).…”