Boston, Massachusetts, August 5, 2002 – CompuCyte Corporation announced today the introduction of the iCyte™ Imaging Cytometer at the Seventh Annual Drug Discovery Technology World Congress.  The Company’s newest addition to its line of laser scanning cytometers brings new approaches to automated high-content cellular analysis for life sciences research.

The iCyte, based on CompuCyte’s patented laser scanning cytometry technology, offers automated high-content cellular analysis capabilities in a high-throughput microtiter plate format.  Among its many advanced features is the ability to precisely measure cellular DNA content – essential in toxicological studies – and simultaneously combine the information gathered from these measurements with other molecular markers and cell morphology.  The iCyte’s unique software offers unprecedented flexibility in data analysis.

“The challenges of the drug discovery landscape demand new and powerful tools that can characterize the functional effects of compounds on the cell cycle, transduction signaling pathways, and stages in the apoptosis/proliferation balance” said Elena Holden, MD, CompuCyte’s President and CEO.  “CompuCyte’s proprietary laser scanning cytometry technology offers clear advantages over the existing methodologies that perform heterogeneous cell-based analysis in homogeneous assay formats.  The iCyte’s microtiter tray analysis capability, its ease of use, stoichiometry, and multicolor capabilities will be of significant value across the entire drug discovery spectrum, especially in target identification and validation studies and pre-clinical toxicology.”

“Depth of features and automation are the keys to high-content screening analysis,” Dr. Holden explained.  “We have taken a multifaceted approach to further enhance the ability of the system to generate high content data.  Laser scanning cytometry is a well known and proven technology for high content image-based analysis of specimens on slides, filters, tissue, and other media.  The new instrument builds on these advantages, adding innovative plate-based automated software routines that make the analysis of large, high content data sets manageable.

“With the iCyte, laser scanning cytometry as an imaging technology has advanced to a new level,” added Louis A. Kamentsky, Ph.D., CompuCyte’s founder and Chairman.  “The iCyte concept is a major step in the evolution of imaging cytometry.   It combines the advantages of flow cytometry, notably stoichiometry and decades of development in high-content data analysis techniques, to modern image-based high content screening.  New automated analysis paradigms have been developed to make the iCyte a unique high information content analysis platform.”

 CompuCyte Corporation, a private company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a leader in the development of cellular analysis instrumentation for the life sciences industries.