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Sequenom Inks Deal With Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield for NIPT Test Coverage

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sequenom announced today that its subsidiary Sequenom Laboratories has signed an in-network contract with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire to cover insured patients for the company's noninvasive prenatal tests.

The life sciences company said the agreements provide coverage for patients with both high- and average-risk pregnancies in those states, effective March 28.

Further terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Our commitment to women's health means doing all we can to ensure affordable access to our testing services. In keeping with this commitment, we continue to gain in-network status with the nation's leading health plans and are encouraged by increasing payor support of NIPT for average-risk pregnancies," said President and CEO Dirk van den Boom in a statement.

Sequenom inked a similar coverage deal with UnitedHealthcare in September 2015, though that deal covered patients nationwide, and included the NIPT test MaterniT21 Plus and the universal and cystic fibrosis carrier screening tests, HerediT Universal and HerediT CF. It did not include the VisibiliT test for screening women with average-risk pregnancies for trisomies 21 and 18, or the MaterniT Genome, a noninvasive test that analyzes chromosomal loss or duplication of greater than 7 megabases across the entire genome.

Sequenom has been dealing with challenges to the validity of a certain patent underlying its NIPT tests. The company filed a petition with the US Supreme Court this week to review decisions by lower federal courts that ruled certain claims of the patent ineligible.

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