Orthopaedic surgeons sometimes combine recombinant, human BMP -2 with autograft bone when dealing with problematic osseous fractures. Although some case reports indicate success with this off-label strategy, there have been no randomized controlled trials. Moreover, a literature search revealed only one pre-clinical study and this was in a cranial defect model. The present project thus examined the consequences of combining different doses of BMP-2 with particles of living bone in a rat femoral defect model. Human bone particles were recovered with a reamer-irrigator-aspirator. To allow acceptance of the xenograft as surrogate autograft, rats were administered an immunosuppressive cocktail that does not interfere with bone healing. Implantation of 200 μg living bone particles generated a small amount of new bone and defects did not heal. Graded amounts of BMP-2 that alone provoked no healing (1.1 μg), borderline healing (5.5 μg) or full healing (11 μg) were added to this amount of human bone particles. Addition of BMP-2 (1.1 μg) increased osteogenesis, and produced bridging in 2 of 7 defects. The quantitative effects of BMP-2 (5.5 μg) and bone particles were additive at best, but made healing more reliable and advanced the maturation of the regenerate. Bone formation with BMP-2 (11 μg) and bone particles was less than additive, and the major effect was to improve the maturation of the newly formed bone. The data suggest that the combination of autograft and BMP-2 can be helpful clinically under conditions where a healing response is present, but suboptimal.