Financing to bring advanced medical diagnostics for life-threatening

Manchester, UK - May 20, 2008 - Myconostica Ltd, a Manchester UK-based medical diagnostic company which specializes in rapid and highly specific tests for life-threatening fungal infections, today announces that it has completed the third close of a $10.8 million round of financing with a $2 million investment from the UMIP Premier Fund ("UPF").

UPF was established in April 2008 to make capital gain by investing in University of Manchester spin out companies. This is their first investment and they join the existing investors, principally Nexus Medical Partners (Boston, US), Innoven Partenaires (Paris), Medicis Ventures (Munich) and the lead investor from the first round, Amphion Innovations (UK/US). With funding from a broad range of UK and European institutional and supranational investors, including EIF (European Investment Fund), the Fund has initial backing of $64 million.

Fungal pneumonia is the leading cause of infectious death in leukaemia and after bone marrow transplantation and is the most common first manifestation of AIDS. Myconostica's test detects the two most common causes of fungal pneumonia, which account for over 95% of cases, in less than 4 hours.

The total capital raised in this financing will support the launch of Myconostica's first two products. The first product is the world's first real-time molecular diagnostic simultaneously testing for both Aspergillus and Pneumocystis. The second product is a fungal DNA extraction system. The clinical studies supporting CE marking, which enables sales in Europe and several other territories, were presented at Europe's leading infectious disease conference (ECCMID) in Barcelona in April of this year. The investment will also allow development and launch of further diagnostic tests in the FXG[tm] series targeting other critical fungal infections, such as the fungi causing sepsis and bloodstream infections. Myconostica will be applying to the FDA for regulatory approval to launch the products in the US market.

Myconostica is also delighted to welcome to their Board Dr David Holbrook, who leads the healthcare practice of MTI, the manager of the UPF fund. David, a qualified doctor, has worked in hospital medicine before joining management consultants LEK and later working in Business Development and Licensing with leading Pharmaceutical companies. David subsequently headed up Imperial College's spin-out operations and seed fund. Immediately prior to joining MTI, Dr Holbrook was on the board of Onyvax Limited, a vaccines company. He has an MA from Oxford and an MBA from Harvard. David's investment, industry and clinical experience will further strengthen the expertise available on the Myconostica Board as the company expands and moves to commercial maturity.

He commented: "We are delighted to be making the UPF's first investment in Myconostica Limited. This is an exemplar of the type of high quality market-focused spin out company for which the University of Manchester is rightly renowned".

Jerel Whittingham, Chief Executive Officer of Myconostica commented on the completion of the third and final close of the funding round: "We have succeeded in attracting leading international investors in the sector who know we can only succeed commercially by making a real difference medically. At such a difficult time in financial markets, Myconostica's success in this oversubscribed fund-raising is a tremendous endorsement of both our rapid progress to date and of our commercial prospects".

For further information please contact:
MTI
Dr David Holbrook, General Partner

• 44 (0) 1923 250 244

Myconostica Ltd
Jerel Whittingham, CEO, (Manchester)
+44 (0)7779 095604 +44 (0)161 998 7239

Dr. John Thornback, Chief Operations Officer
+44 (0)7968 726573

About The UMIP Premier Fund ("UPF")
UPF invests in businesses emerging from The University of Manchester's "5-star" rated academic departments. The University's technology transfer company, UMIP, undertakes the stringent business selection of the investments and the fund is managed by the UK's leading technology investment manager, MTI Partners. The Fund will primarily make late-seed stage investments, in a total of 15 - 20 companies, initially in the $500K - $1.5M range, with both the intention and capacity to provide follow-on investment up to $6 million.

About Myconostica Ltd.
Myconostica is a medical diagnostics company, spun out of The University of Manchester in 2006 specializing in molecular diagnostic tests for life-threatening invasive fungal infections. Myconostica has its Head Office and laboratories in South Manchester, and has strong links to the University Hospital South Manchester and the Regional Mycology Laboratory in Manchester. A facility in South Carolina in the United States is currently being put in place. Founded by David Denning, Professor of Medicine and Medical Mycology, Myconostica has a strong pipeline of products, the first of which will be launched in 2008. For more information please visit www.myconostica.co.uk.

Myconostica is a partner company of Amphion Innovations. (AIM: AMP-L).

The UMIP Premier Fund is supported by the European Union through the "Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme" ("CIP").