ATP is a well-known energy supplier in cells. The idea to associate ATP to pharmaceutical formulations/biotechnological devices to promote cells activity by potentially modulating their microenvironment thus appears as an appealing novel approach. Since biomimetic nanocrystalline apatites have shown great promise for biomedical applications (bone regeneration, cells diagnostics/therapeutics,...), thanks to a high surface reactivity and an intrinsically high biocompatibility, the present contribution was aimed at exploring ATP/apatite interactions. ATP adsorption on a synthetic carbonated nanocrystalline apatite preliminarily characterized (by XRD, FUR, Raman, TG-DTA and SEM-EDX) was investigated in detail, pointing out a good agreement with Sips isothermal features. Adsorption characteristics were compared to those previously obtained on monophosphate nucleotides (AMP, CMP), unveiling some specificities. ATP was found to adsorb effectively onto biomimetic apatite: despite smaller values of the affinity constant K-S and the exponential factor m, larger adsorbed amounts were reached for ATP as compared to AMP for any given concentration in solution. m < 1 suggests that the ATP/apatite adsorption process is mostly guided by direct surface bonding rather than through stabilizing intermolecular interactions. Although standard Delta G degrees(ads), was estimated to only -4 kJ/mol, the large value of N-max led to significantly negative effective A Gads values down to -33 kJ/mol, reflecting the spontaneous character of adsorption process. Vibrational spectroscopy data (FTIR and Raman) pointed out spectral modifications upon adsorption, confirming chemical-like interactions where both the triphosphate group of ATP and its nucleic base were involved. The present study is intended to serve as a basis for future research works involving ATP and apatite nanocrystals/nanoparticles in view of biomedical applications (e.g. bone tissue engineering, intracellular drug delivery,...). (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.