Vista Partners Initiates Coverage on MediciNova Inc. (Nas...( LOS ANGELES July 16 /- Vista Part...)

LOS ANGELES, July 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Vista Partners announced today that it has initiated coverage on MediciNova Inc. (Nasdaq: MNOV). "MediciNova has a promising drug development pipeline for treating a variety of diseases and conditions. The Company is primarily focused on two drug development programs; the first is MN-221 for the treatment of Status Asthmaticus. There are an estimated 2,000,000 visits to the emergency room a year for asthma related difficulties. The market for treatment of asthma related difficulties is in the billions and we believe MN-221, if approved, will garner a sizable percentage of the market potentially resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in sales for MediciNova. The second drug in development is MN-166 for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is believed to affect approximately 350,000 to 400,000 people in the United States and over 2.5 million globally. Worldwide sales of drugs used in the treatment of MS were approximately $7.2 billion in 2006," said Ross Silver, Director of Research for Vista Partners. For more information and to download the report, please visit the Vista Partners website at http://www.vistap.com and click on the download research icon.

About Vista Partners:

Vista Partners provides independent, equity research to institutional and individual investors, with a focus on publicly traded small capitalization companies. With offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Vista Partners is one of the fastest growing independently owned equity research firms. Vista Partners professional staff has backgrounds in finance, corporate communications and investment banking. More information is available at