NEW YORK – LGC Clinical Diagnostics said Tuesday that it has extended and expanded an exclusive partnership with the Stanford University Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology around maternal and fetal diagnostic testing.
Under the agreement, Stanford will continue to provide LGC with clinical guidance in recruiting and selecting patients whose pregnancy has been identified with a genetic abnormality. LGC uses the cases to manufacture reference materials for noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT).
Milford, Massachusetts-based LGC offers these NIPT reference materials as part of its SeraCare line, marketing them as an alternative to clinical samples.
The partnership will also be expanded to cover analysis of phenotypic-genotypic correlations and metabolic profiling of some common maternal/fetal cardiac defects known to be related to monogenic disorders.
"Our collaboration with Stanford has been key to designing and developing quality control standards for fetal maternal medicine and NIPT," Russell Garlick, CSO at LGC, said in a statement. "This year, we hope to make further contributions advancing biochemical profiling using mass spec-based metabolomics to help identify biomarkers for early indications of maternal fetal disorders that emerge late in pregnancy."
“For the last five years, we have had a fruitful collaboration with SeraCare that has led to many discoveries and improvements in the field of prenatal genetics," Katherine Bianco, clinical associate professor at Stanford, said in a statement. "We are looking forward to expanding our understanding of fetal and maternal wellness, utilizing cutting edge metabolic and lipidomic profiling.”
Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.