FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, Feb 17, 2005

CONTACT:
Najla Aftahi
(858) 677-0466

Floyd Bloom to Retire as Scripps Research Department Chair; Focus on Neurome Neurodegeneration Programs

La Jolla, California February 17, 2005— Floyd E. Bloom, M.D., and The Scripps Research Institute today announced Dr. Bloom’s retirement as chairman of the Scripps Research Department of Neuropharmacology. Bloom will be named Professor Emeritus at Scripps Research and also intends to devote substantial efforts to the work of Neurome, Inc., the La Jolla-based biotechnology company dedicated to discovery and development of solutions for human neurodegenerative diseases, which he co-founded in 2000.

Dr. Bloom is the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of Science, the world's premier journal of scientific thought and discovery, and served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 2002 to 2003, and as Chairman of the Board of Directors, from 2003 to 2004. A professor at Scripps Research since 1983, Dr. Bloom has served as Chairman of the Department of Neuropharmacology from 1989 to 2000 and again from 2002 to the present. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1977, Dr. Bloom is the recipient of numerous prizes for his contributions to science, including the Janssen Award in the Basic Sciences and the Pasarow Award in Neuropsychiatry. He has also been named a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bloom's more than 600 publications include the seminal work: The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology.

“Floyd Bloom has distinguished our faculty and American science with his unique combination of experimental vision, intellectual integrity, investigative energy and generous collegiality,” said Scripps Research President Richard A. Lerner, M.D. “We look forward to Floyd’s continuing contributions to neuroscience, both at the Institute and through the promising work of Neurome.”

“In a career blessed by association with remarkable investigators, I’ve had no pleasure greater than the fellowship of my Scripps Research colleagues,” said Bloom “Under Richard Lerner’s leadership, the Institute has pioneered a new neuroscience and articulated the promise of a new medicine. My continuing associations with Scripps Research and with my colleagues at Neurome, will be dedicated to the challenge of making that promise a reality through development of understanding and treatment of human neurodegenerative disease.”

About The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and Palm Beach County, Florida, is one of the world's largest, private, non-profit biomedical research organizations. It stands at the forefront of basic biomedical science that seeks to comprehend the most fundamental processes of life. Scripps Research is internationally recognized for its research in immunology, molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, neurosciences, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases and synthetic vaccine development. Please visit the Institute at www.scripps.edu.

About Neurome

Neurome, Inc. is a discovery stage biotechnology company that seeks therapeutic solutions to human neurodegenerative diseases. The company focuses its efforts on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) – usually fatal neurodegenerative disorders that are currently untreatable and share characteristics which make them particularly amenable to Neurome's expertise and technologies.

Since its founding in 2000, Neurome has developed and optimized proprietary technologies to reveal and quantify gene expression patterns and the resultant morphological details of brain structures in normal and pathological brains with an unprecedented level of sensitivity, specificity and resolution. Neurome’s unique technologies to measure and assess neurodegenerative processes at work – at the molecular, cellular and macroscopic levels – are ideally suited to identify the earliest evidence of pathology in models of human diseases of the Central Nervous System, as well as to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of pharmaceutical candidates for intervention. The company dedicates these technologies to discovery and development of drugs to provide effective treatments for diseases characterized by neurodegeneration. Detailed information on the Neurome technologies and the scientific and medical challenges of human neurodegenerative disorders are available at Neurome’s website: www.neurome.com.