Natera, a genetic testing company, has announced that DiagCor, a manufacturer of in-vitro diagnostic products and service provider of clinical diagnostic tests, has signed an agreement to launch Natera’s Panorama non-invasive prenatal screening test (NIPT) in Hong Kong.
Panorama uses a simple blood draw from the mother to detect trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome), trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome), monosomy X (Turner's syndrome), triploidy (Triploid syndrome) and sex chromosome aneuploidies.
The test, launched in the US, is highly accurate and can be performed from nine weeks onward. In contrast to traditional genetic testing like amniocentesis, Panorama causes no risk to the fetus.
Natera CEO Dr Matthew Rabinowitz noted the company said: "Natera is committed to helping parents worldwide have healthy babies, and this partnership with DiagCor enables us to expand Panorama's availability to patients in Hong Kong and the surrounding region."
Panorama is an advanced second generation NIPT that uniquely uses a patented algorithm called Next Generation Aneuploidy Test Using SNPs (NATUS) to analyze the cell-free DNA from both the mother and the fetus. Utilizing the mother's white blood cells, Panorama is able to identify the fetal genotype, resulting in higher accuracy than first generation NIPT technologies, which use a purely quantitative counting method to determine fetal chromosomal copy number.
Across multiple clinical trials, Panorama has been validated globally and has greater than 99% combined accuracy for trisomy 21, trisomy 18, trisomy 13, monosomy X and triploidy. Panorama is also offered as part of the California Prenatal Screening Program, the largest publicly-funded screening program in the world.
