CENTICE CORPORATION AWARDED PATENT FOR DIGITALLY ENCODED RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY

 Expansion of Patent Portfolio Highlighted at CED’s Venture 2006 Conference

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – May 2, 2006 –Centice Corporation, a pioneer in next generation sensor technology, today announced that the company expanded its patent portfolio with the recent award of “Encoded Excitation Source Raman Spectroscopy Methods and Systems.” This patent describes a novel way of encoding multiple excitation sources to selectively filter non-Raman spectral backgrounds (such as fluorescence) from Raman spectral features – thus eliminating interferences and resulting in accurate, high sensitivity measurements.

Centice designs and manufactures computational sensors which enable a new generation of high sensitivity molecular analyzers. Centice is the exclusive licensee of the Multimodal Multiplex Spectroscopy™ (MMS) technology first developed at Duke University under NIH and DARPA grants for tissue spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging. To date, the company has filed more than twenty patent applications . Centice is offering this computational sensor technology through strategic OEM partnerships.

Selected as one of North Carolina’s top investment opportunities by the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), Centice will present at the Venture 2006 Conference, May 2-6 in Pinehurst, N.C. The company will showcase its MMS technology to hundreds of venture capitalists and financers from throughout the United States. CED's annual venture conference is nationally recognized as the Southeast's premier venture financing conference.

“Our MMS technology presents a new paradigm in molecular spectroscopy enabling researchers and industry to address new markets and a broad range of research and application-specific products,” said Mike Sullivan, interim CEO of Centice. “We are pleased to be presenting at this year’s Venture Conference because it provides an ideal platform to introduce the technology and share the company’s significant milestones.”

Spectroscopy is used in a broad variety of research and process applications, including material identification, quantitative analysis and quality control. Conventional spectrometers use a slit at the entrance to the light dispersing module. In these traditional designs, there is an inherent tradeoff between resolution and light throughput. While spectral resolution increases as slit width decreases, a narrow input slit greatly limits photon throughput and, likewise, measurement sensitivity.

Centice’s MMS technology uses an encoded wide area aperture instead of a slit, thus providing extremely high throughput with no sacrifice in spectral resolution. The large area encoded aperture yields 3.5X to 12X the signal-to-noise (SNR) as compared with slit based instruments with equivalent resolution. This extreme sensitivity is achieved without compromising spectral resolution in UV/Vis, NIR, Raman and fluorescence measurement.

“This event builds on our positive momentum in the first quarter of 2006, as we have made significant progress against key corporate milestones. Products are shipping, our patent portfolio is expanding and we have added experienced leadership to our management team,” added Sullivan.

Earlier this year, Centice announced two partners that incorporated the new technology into their product portfolios. Ocean Optics, a worldwide leader in providing spectroscopy solutions, added to its spectroscopy portfolio through the co-branding and distribution of Centice’s MMS-based Raman spectrometer system. In addition, Newport Corporation, a worldwide leader in spectroscopy instruments, selected the MMS technology for its new spectrometer platform and is the first company to offer a UV-Vis spectrometer based on Centice technology. Working with its partners, Centice is actively fulfilling orders and shipping products.
 

 ABOUT CENTICE CORPORATION

Centice, founded in 2004, is commercializing a patent-pending computational sensor technology originally developed at Duke University. Centice leverages this technology with its expertise in instrument design to produce a portfolio of high sensitivity optical sensing modules for the analytical, life sciences, medical and pharmaceutical industries. The company has received venture capital investments from The Aurora Funds, Inc. (www.aurorafunds.com) and Novak Biddle Venture Partners (www.novakbiddle.com).  More information on Centice can be found at http://www.centice.com.

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Media Contacts:

For Centice Corporation

Brandon Bryce

Largemouth PR

(919) 623-0620

brandon@largemouthpr.com