NeuroScience Associates -NSA- Announces the Opening of the Neurotoxicity Testing Center -NTC-.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The NTC will conduct independent neurotoxicity testing on new drug and chemical compounds with reliable results in only 3-4 months

NSA, a leader in providing premier neurohistologic services and products, announced today the launch of their newest division, the Neurotoxicity Testing Center (NTC). The NTC will enhance pharmaceutical and chemical research and development efforts by providing turn-key evaluation services to detect neurotoxicity in new drug candidates, early in the drug development process. The same safety assessment strategy is applicable to environmental compounds.

NSA Labs has spent years refining the science of detecting and screening for neurotoxicity and will make that experience available to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, cost effectively, through the services provided by the NTC. Prior to behavioral and clinical testing, customers supply their candidates to the NTC for evaluation services to determine if their compounds are safe to structures in the brain. Within 3-4 months, the NTC will deliver a report detailing neurodegenerative elements of the studied compounds. Equipped with this information, researchers will eliminate non-viable compounds early; retool promising compounds that are determined to be neurodegenerative or move ahead confidently with compounds that are certified by the NTC to be non-neurodegenerative. By eliminating non-viable compounds early, drug and chemical developers will potentially save $100s of millions getting safe new products to market.

"Being able to exploit the efficiency and high throughput of our MultiBrain(TM) technology allows us to ensure rapid turnaround, low cost, accurate and reliable results," said Britt Massei, Chief Executive and Financial Officer NeuroScience Associates. "We are very pleased to be able to offer this service to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries."

"Sometimes a single event can cause brain cell death, while other times a succession of events make the cell weaker, which ultimately leads to cell death. The strategy embodied by the NTC will detect both events," said Dr. Robert C. Switzer III President and Chief Scientific Officer of NeuroScience Associates. "We have evaluated multiple stains and we have perfected the Disintegration Detection Stain to be able to isolate brain cell death. Easy detection means rapid and reliable results."

NSA will be highlighting the NTC at the upcoming IBC 9th Annual World Congress Drug Discovery Technology 2004 Conference, August 8-13th in Boston Massachusetts. They will also be hosting a web cast September 6, 2004 at 10am EST and 6pm EST. For more information, please contact Robert Switzer at [phone] and [e-mail] or visit www.NSALabs.com.

About NeuroScience Associates (NSA):

NSA has been providing premier Neurohistologic services and specialized tools to the market for 15 years and is the inventor and sole provider of MultiBrain(TM) technology. Since it's inception in 1989, the company has earned an excellent reputation for providing high-throughput, superior sections and unsurpassed image analysis. To date, NSA Labs has performed histology services on over 2 million brain and spinal cord sections from more than 20 different species of animals, ranging from neonate brains to fully intact human brain hemispheres.