(Photo Courtesy: www.dreamstime.com)
As part of the agreement, MedGenome will have exclusive license to develop the capacity and perform the Panorama test in India.
Natera's test, known as Panorama, examines fetal DNA in the mother's blood to assess whether a developing baby is at high risk for having an abnormality in the chromosomes.
Panorama uses a simple blood draw from the mother to screen for trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome), trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome), trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome) and select sex chromosome abnormalities, such as monosomy X (Turner syndrome).
Panorama is the only screening test in the world that detects triploidy status in the fetus (69 chromosomes rather than 46 chromosomes), and reports whether a 'vanishing' twin was present, i.e. there was a twin but it got absorbed, and is no longer detectable by ultrasound.
Panorama can be performed from as early as 9 weeks gestation.
In contrast to traditional prenatal genetic testing like chorionic villus sampling and amniocentesis, which are invasive tests, Panorama does not pose any risk for the fetus.
