CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & PISCATAWAY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 2005--GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, today announced a collaboration with the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration & Repair to use GE Healthcare's state-of-the-art cellular imaging system, the IN Cell Analyzer, to enhance research of the human central nervous system and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. In addition, HCNR and GE will work together to develop new software tools that will help speed disease analysis in the lab.

GE Healthcare's IN Cell Analyzer is an imaging system used by researchers in pharmaceutical and academic labs to analyze a variety of cellular processes in disease definition and drug development. The HCNR was established to develop therapies for neurodegenerative diseases through collaborative translational research. The new imaging system will help scientists decipher the molecular and pathological mechanisms of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Huntington's disease (HD), ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), and multiple sclerosis (MS).

"This collaboration could result in a better understanding of degenerative diseases that affect the brain, which is currently not well understood by the medical community," said Stephen Wong, PhD, P.E., Director of the HCNR Center for Bioinformatics, and an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. "We can see cells more clearly and how they react to specific drugs. This gives our researchers a better view of complex neurological processes that impact the progression of diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease."

"We believe GE's innovative disease research technologies combined with the ground-breaking research being done at HCNR will, ultimately, enhance the efficiency of healthcare and the quality of patient care," said Joel McComb, President of Discovery Systems at GE Healthcare.