Performance of osteoinductive biphasic calcium-phosphate ceramic in a critical-sized defect in goats

Osteoinductive biomaterials are able of inducing bone formation at ectopic, i.e. extraskeletal implantation sites. It is, however, important to investigate whether osteoinductive biomaterials perform better when implanted orthotopically as well, in particular in clinically relevant critical-sized defects. In this study, an osteoinductive and a non-osteoinductive biphasic calcium-phosphate (BCP) ceramic were compared in a critical-sized iliac wing defect that allows for paired comparison. After 12 weeks of implantation in the critical-sized defect, the osteoinductive BCP1150 ceramic showed significantly more bone than the non-osteoinductive BCP1300 ceramic. In addition, the analysis of fluorochrome markers, which were administered to the animals 4, 6 and 8 weeks after implantation in order to visualize the bone growth dynamics, showed an earlier start of bone formation in BCP1150 as compared to BCP1300. Significantly better performance of osteoinductive ceramic in a critical-sized orthotopic defect in a large animal model in comparison to the non-osteoinductive ceramic suggests osteoinduction to be clinically relevant.