Pathological Mineralization

Dear Colleagues,

In a world in which conventional mineralogy comes to a new life in many top trending topics, from the environment and circular economy to secondary raw materials, and technological materials, biomineralization connected to pathologies (cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases) is reported in a huge number of papers, mainly coming from the medical field.

However, if not in rare cases (kidney stone mineralization must be mentioned), neither a systematic study nor a tentative explanation of the mechanisms involved in pathological mineralization has been attempted, and papers are usually focused on the biological and clinical aspects, without intensive interest in crystal nucleation and growth conditions.

Moreover, many studies have been published about the effects of the intake of fine mineral particles (silica, asbestos) on health, but in this case, minerals have an exogenous origin, while in pathological mineralization minerals have an endogenous origin quite possibly related to local imbalances or overreaction to local inflammatory conditions.

In this Special Issue, we will focus our attention on pathological mineralization in hard and soft tissues, paying particular attention to the local environmental conditions and their relationships with the nucleation, growth and evolution of the mineralization itself, and to the interaction between different mineralizations connected to the same clinical status. This will be a challenging cross-disciplinary approach, involving tight collaboration among clinical, chemical and crystallographic expertise.

Full papers, communications and reviews are all welcome. Representative topics include but are not limited to pathological mineralization characterization, its interaction with the formation environment and related measurable parameters, the kinetics of pathological mineralization evolution and eventual resorption with the goal of prevention and treatment.

Prof. Dr. Marco Bruno
Dr. Linda Pastero
Guest Editors

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• biomineralization
• pathological mineralization
• crystal nucleation
• crystal growth
• hard tissues
• soft tissues