NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Premaitha Health announced today that it has signed an agreement to make its Iona non-invasive prenatal screening test (NIPT) available in India through UK- and India-based molecular diagnostics distributor Visional Medical.
The Iona test estimates the risk of a fetus being affected by Down syndrome and other serious genetic conditions by analyzing cell-free fetal DNA from a maternal blood sample. It received CE marking about a year ago.
"The potential market for NIPT in India is huge — there are millions of pregnancies every year and currently little provision of any prenatal screening," Premaitha CEO Stephen Little said in a statement. "Our partnership with Visional Medical will provide a risk-free, rapid, and reliable prenatal screening test to address this unmet medical need."
This deal — the fourth Premaitha has signed with specialist regional partners in the past three months — will also expand Iona's reach into Asia for the first time, he added. Last month, Premaitha announced that it had signed Iona service contracts with customers in Armenia and the Republic of Moldova. In December, Premaitha announced that Adgenix had become the exclusive distributor of the Iona test in France.
Also in 2015, the company inked Iona distribution deals for Greece and Chili with Antisel and Servicios Geneticos OriGen, respectively.