Pathological mineralization has been reported countless times in the literature and is a
well-known phenomenon in the medical field for its connections to a wide range of diseases, including
cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. The minerals involved in calcification,
however, have not been directly studied as extensively as the organic components of each of the
pathologies. These have been studied in isolation and, for most of them, physicochemical properties
are hitherto not fully known. In a parallel development, materials science methods such as electron
microscopy, spectroscopy, thermal analysis, and others have been used in biology mainly for the
study of hard tissues and biomaterials and have only recently been incorporated in the study of
other biological systems. This review connects a range of soft tissue diseases, including breast cancer,
age-related macular degeneration, aortic valve stenosis, kidney stone diseases, and Fahr’s syndrome,
all of which have been associated with mineralization processes. Furthermore, it describes how
physicochemical material characterization methods have been used to provide new information on
such pathologies. Here, we focus on diseases that are associated with calcium-composed minerals to
discuss how understanding the properties of these minerals can provide new insights on their origins,
considering that different conditions and biological features are required for each type of mineral
to be formed. We show that mineralomics, or the study of the properties and roles of minerals, can
provide information which will help to improve prevention methods against pathological mineral
build-up, which in the cases of most of the diseases mentioned in this review, will ultimately lead to
new prevention or treatment methods for the diseases. Importantly, this review aims to highlight that
chemical composition alone cannot fully support conclusions drawn on the nature of these minerals
