Gene Security Network Inc. (GSN) today announced the commercial launch of its first non-invasive prenatal test powered by the company's proprietary bioinformatics technology, Parental Support™.
“The application of advanced statistics to non-invasive prenatal testing enables us to deliver highly accurate information to expecting parents safely and early in the pregnancy”
Parental Support combines single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) technology with advanced bioinformatics algorithms to generate highly accurate genetic information from small amounts of free-floating fetal DNA found in the mother's blood. Non-invasive prenatal testing is completely safe for mother and fetus and replaces current invasive tests, such as amniocentesis, which can be dangerous to the pregnancy. Use of the technology to determine paternity has been licensed to a partner.
"The application of advanced statistics to non-invasive prenatal testing enables us to deliver highly accurate information to expecting parents safely and early in the pregnancy," said Matthew Rabinowitz, Ph.D., CEO of GSN. "This approach eliminates the current choice between screening tests that are invasive and those that are unreliable. Today's launch is an important milestone for GSN as we work toward launching our non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test, based on the same technology, for Down syndrome and other genetic disorders. We are currently initiating a large, prospective clinical trial, the first trial of its kind to be funded by the National Institutes of Health, with the leading maternal fetal medicine centers in the United States to assess the efficacy."
DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC), the world's largest provider of DNA paternity tests, has exclusively licensed the technology for the U.S. consumer market and is distributing the newly-launched test under the name 'DDC's Non-Invasive Prenatal Paternity Test.'
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