B Acad Nat Med Paris
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Blood platelets are anucleated elements of the blood. With a diameter of 2 to 3 μm, they are the smallest elements of blood. While their main role is to stop or prevent bleeding, they are also involved in other functions, such as immunity, inflammation or tumour progression. ⋯ Consequently, this type of product could have its place in meeting a number of transfusion challenges such as alloimmunization or refractory states. However, culture yields remain low and many hurdles still need to be overcome before considering an application in transfusion. This article reviews the rationale for the production of cultured platelets for transfusion and summarizes the main advances in the field while highlighting its limitations.
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Antipsychotic drugs are one of the oldest drugs that can change the brain activity. These drugs are mainly used in schizophrenia and the first drug that was judged as efficacious in the treatment of psychosis has been chlorpromazine. ⋯ Three main issues could explain this failure: the exact causes of schizophrenia is still unknown, we still used the idea that one drug could improve all the symptoms of schizophrenia and it is clear that the group of schizophrenics disease could be different disease with different causes. We propose to review the different drugs that have been tested and we will discuss why the most recent genetic studies could help us to propose new pharmacological targets to treat schizophrenia.