Myriad Genetics Amplify for Fetal Cell-Free DNA Sequencing

Myriad Genetics has launched Amplify, which sequences the fetal cell-free DNA fragments circulating in a mother's blood and increases the fetal fraction in a sample for non-invasive prenatal screening. The company is hoping that the technology will improve the performance of its Prequel NIPS test. The analytical validation of Amplify involved samples from more than 1,000 women and showed that the fetal fraction was 2.3 times greater on average compared to standard NIPS. The improvement reduces false positive and false negative results, including for common aneuploidies, expanded aneuploidies, microdeletions, and a baby's sex, Myriad noted. The company also said that the technology will reduce the number of sampels that fail to produce a result due to low fetal fraction and deliver results to 99.9 percent of patients.