Many commercial bone graft substitutes (BGS) and experimental bone tissue engineering scaffolds have been developed for bone repair and regeneration. This study reports the in vivo bone regeneration using a newly developed porous bioactive and resorbable composite that is composed of bioactive glass (BG), collagen (COL), hyaluronic acid (HYA) and phosphatidylserine (PS), BG-COL-HYA-PS. The composite was prepared by a combination of sol-gel and freeze-drying methods. A rabbit radius defect model was used to evaluate bone regeneration at time points of 2, 4 and 8 weeks. Techniques including radiography, histology, and micro-CT were applied to characterize the new bone formation. 8 weeks results showed that (1) nearly complete bone regeneration was achieved for the BG-COL-HYA-PS composite that was combined with a bovine bonemorphogenetic protein (BMP); (2) partial bone regeneration was achieved for the BG-COL-HYA-PS composites alone; and ( 3) control remained empty. This study demonstrated that the novel BG-COL-HYA-PS, with or without the grafting of BMP incorporation, is a promising BGS or a tissue engineering scaffold for non-load bearing orthopaedic applications. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.