NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sengenics said this week that it has exclusively partnered with Sequenom to launch that company's VisibiliT non-invasive prenatal test in Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei.
VisibiliT targets women with average-risk pregnancies and has a lower cost and content than Sequenom's MaterniT21 Plus NIPT. Using a maternal blood sample, it analyzes chromosomal material in cell-free DNA of pregnant women to provide information about common fetal trisomies. The test reports a risk score for trisomies 21, 18, and 13, as well as fetal gender.
The test has better than 99 percent sensitivity and specificity for trisomies 21, 18, and 13 based on a clinical study of more than 1,000 samples, Sengenic said. In a statement, Sengenics Technical Director Arif Anwar highlighted the need for VisibiliT, saying many women in Asia have children later in life, increasing the risk for genetic abnormalities in their babies.
Along with the three new countries announced as part of this week's deal, Sengenics will make VisibiliT available in Singapore and Malaysia, territories covered by a previous deal struck by the firms in 2012 for MaterniT21 Plus.