Tissue Calcification in Normal and Pathological Environments

Dear Colleagues,

It is well known that physiological calcification is a regulated process occurring during histogenesis or the remodeling of the so-called hard tissues bones, bone-forming cartilages, tooth enamel, dentin, and cementum. The pathological calcific processes are associated with aging and/or various diseases and are usually classified into the main types referred to as dystrophic, metastatic, iatrogenic, idiopathic, and calciphylaxis, words which are not dictated by univocal and/or exhaustive criteria so that supernumerary adjectives are often used, such as endocrine, metabolic, vascular, infectious, congenital, or neoplastic. Thus, the common term “calcification” is actually consistent with its culmination in tissue mineralization but indeed indicating a composite ensemble of distinct processes, of which physiological calcification at most remains a reference model for better elucidating the ectopic mineralization processes occurring in soft tissues in terms of underlying molecular mechanisms and inherent stimulatory, inhibitory, and propagatory factors.

Because of the conflicting results gained hitherto, a debate is still ongoing as to whether ectopic calcification depends on osteogenic differentiation, rather than protein-dysregulated secretory processes or cell-death-based degenerative pathways, thereby the detection of therapeutics exclusively targeted to the suppression of osteogenic-like factors or their genes might be not entirely effective in treating this multifaceted and likely multifactorial disorder.

Bearing in mind that surgery remains the only viable solution to date, future investigation on calcification will have to continue in all directions employing multidisciplinary approaches and aiming to develop appropriate therapeutic strategies counteracting dysregulated calcification, so preventing or delaying the progression of a disorder that is increasingly recognized as a major health problem leading to relevant morbidity and mortality in humans of any age.

Given the great number of open problems and the complexity of the different calcific events, any investigation adding information on biomineralization in both normal and pathological contexts will be welcomed in the setting of the present Special Issue project.

I look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.

Dr. Fulvia Ortolani
Guest Editor

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• calcification
• ectopic mineralization
• bone
• heterotopic ossification
• calcium phosphate
• calcium carbonate
• calcium oxalate
• procalcific cell death