The Annual Meeting is now less than three weeks away. A highlight of the program will be the panel discussion "Platelets in the 21st Century" with Richard Pinkowitz, MD Vice President, Immunetics, Inc., Laurence Corash M.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Cerus and Paul Mintz, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Verax Biomedical. We anticipate a robust and insightful interchange that should help provide timely information to attendees regarding changes in platelet component production and testing that will directly impact both blood centers and hospitals.
Questions and Answers About Pathogen-Reduced Apheresis Platelet Components
Prepared by the AABB Pathogen Inactivation Technology Review Work Group
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved pathogen inactivation (PI) technologies that can be employed as an additional safety measure to help maintain a safe blood supply. The FDA has approved the INTERCEPT Blood System (Cerus Corp, Concord, CA) for pathogen reduction of 1) apheresis platelets stored in plasma and platelet additive solution (PAS) and 2) plasma. The FDA has also approved an additional pathogen-reduced plasma product, Octaplas (Octapharma, Vienna, Austria) that uses a solvent/detergent method. This document focuses solely on pathogen-reduced platelets treated using the INTERCEPT Blood System method.