Chronic sodium bromide treatment relieves autistic-like behavioral deficits in three mouse models of autism.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders whose diagnosis relies on deficient social interaction and communication together with repetitive behavior. To date, no pharmacological treatment has been approved that ameliorates social behavior in patients with ASD. Based on the excitation/inhibition imbalance theory of autism, we hypothesized that bromide ions, long used as an antiepileptic medication, could relieve core symptoms of ASD.

Facilitating mGluR4 activity reverses the long-term deleterious consequences of chronic morphine exposure in male mice.

Understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of abstinence from drugs of abuse is critical to allow better recovery and ensure relapse prevention in addicted subjects. By comparing the long-term transcriptional consequences of morphine and cocaine exposure, we identified the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 4 (mGluR4) as a promising pharmacological target in morphine abstinence. We evaluated the behavioral and molecular effects of facilitating mGluR4 activity in abstinent mice.

The orphan receptor GPR88 blunts the signaling of opioid receptors and multiple striatal GPCRs.

GPR88 is an orphan G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) considered as a promising therapeutic target for neuropsychiatric disorders; its pharmacology, however, remains scarcely understood. Based on our previous report of increased delta opioid receptor activity in null mice, we investigated the impact of GPR88 co-expression on the signaling of opioid receptors in vitro and revealed that GPR88 inhibits the activation of both their G protein- and β-arrestin-dependent signaling pathways. In knockout mice, morphine-induced locomotor sensitization, withdrawal and supra-spinal analgesia were facilitated, consistent with a tonic inhibitory action of GPR88 on µOR signaling.

Larger number of invariant natural killer T cells in PBSC allografts correlates with improved GVHD-free and progression-free survival.

We studied the impact of a set of immune cells contained within granulocyte colony-stimulating factor-mobilized peripheral blood stem cell grafts (naïve and memory T-cell subsets, B cells, regulatory T cells, invariant natural killer T cells [iNKTs], NK cells, and dendritic cell subsets) in patients (n = 80) undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT), using the composite end point of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)-free and progression-free survival (GPFS) as the primary end point. We observed that GPFS incidences in patients receiving iNKT doses above and below the median were 49% vs 22%, respectively (P= .007).

[Optimization of a haematopoietic stem cell freezing process using a qualification protocol applicable to a programmable freezer].

Background: The freezing phase is a critical step of the freezing process of the hematopoietic stem cells. To standardize the decrease of the temperature, the use of a programmable freezer is recommended. There is no available protocol, neither to describe exactly the validation of a programmable freezer, nor to prove the performance of the freezing/thawing step of the grafts.