Wageningen, 11 July 1996 - EthoVision is rapidly becoming accepted as a standard instrument to automate behavioral tests. It seems like yesterday when we unveiled the first commercial version at the Society for Neuroscience in November 1993, and we are now pleased to welcome Cerebrus Ltd as the 100th user! On July 10th, Bill Budenberg of Tracksys Ltd, our UK distributor, installed an EthoVision Pro system in Cerebrus' biological laboratories in Harrow, a suburb of London.

Cerebrus is a research company that specializes in neuroscience. Formed in 1995 by five leading neuroscientists, the company provides a state-of-the-art Central Nervous System (CNS) contract research and consultancy service, and conducts discovery research to identify novel, high quality, drug development candidates for the treatment of CNS disorders. Cerebrus is the first UK company solely dedicated to CNS research.

Dr Allan Fletcher, Director of Neuropharmacology, sees ample opportunities for the contract research services offered by Cerebrus. "Multinational companies are increasingly outsourcing in vivo CNS testing, and many emerging pharmaceutical firms do not find it cost-effective to carry out in vivo testing in-house. We satisfy the need for state-of-the-art in vivo testing with an array of behavioral models of CNS-related diseases, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders, dementia, stroke and brain trauma, and movement disorders."

Noldus Information Technology is proud that Cerebrus has chosen EthoVision as a key instrument in its research. Besides being used as a tool to increase the productivity of contract research, EthoVision will be put to use in Cerebrus' drug discovery activities, which focus on psychiatric, neurodegenerative and eating disorders. "The flexibility of the system and its capability to automate up to eight different tests using a single video camera were the key factors which made us select EthoVision" says ethopharmacologist Dr Scott Weiss. "Since we want to use it for single-animal tests in multiple arenas as well as to record interactions in pairs of rats, we opted for the EthoVision Pro configuration".

We wish the scientists at Cerebrus success with EthoVision and their pioneering research!  

For more information, please contact the product manager of EthoVision.