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- Accomplished business and health services leader joins Sera in its quest to improve pregnancy outcomes of mothers and babies -

SALT LAKE CITY, April 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sera Prognostics Inc., The Pregnancy Company® (NASDAQ: SERA), focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information to doctors and patients, today announced that Dr. Jane F. Barlow has joined the Sera Board of Directors.

"We are very excited to have Dr. Jane Barlow join Sera's talented board," said Gregory C. Critchfield, CEO and Chairman of Sera Prognostics. "Jane possesses deep expertise in bringing novel products and services to the market, through operations, strategy development and board experiences. Jane's unique background in pioneering a variety of novel health services will be helpful to Sera as we achieve Sera's important vision of improving the health of mothers and babies and simultaneously realizing healthcare cost savings for society."

Dr. Barlow has served as Chief Executive Officer of Jane Barlow & Associates, LLC, a consulting firm focused on value-based health care services, since January 2017, and Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Real Endpoints, a data, analytics, and advisory firm, since January 2017. She currently serves on the board of directors of ContraFect Corp., a publicly traded biotechnology company, and Viracta Therapeutics, Inc., a publicly traded precision oncology company. Dr. Barlow also serves on the board of directors of Point Health, a healthcare navigation platform, the advisory board of Refactor Health, and the Biotech Advisory Board of Pictet Asset Management, an asset management firm. Prior to her current roles, Dr. Barlow was Associate Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health and Chief Medical Officer of CVS Health's Government Services arm where she successfully implemented industry-leading clinical strategies supporting drug purchasing, distribution, and utilization management. Formerly, she served as Vice President of Clinical Innovation at Medco Health Solutions, leading the adoption of cutting-edge therapeutic programs through all aspects of pharmacy. Dr. Barlow previously served on the board of directors of Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (prior to and during its sale to Johnson and Johnson), Therapeutics MD Inc., and SilverScript Insurance Company. Dr. Barlow received her medical degree from Creighton University School of Medicine and subsequently completed her residency in occupational and environmental medicine at The Johns Hopkins University, where she also earned her M.P.H. Additionally, she holds an M.B.A. from the University of Alabama. She is board-certified in occupational medicine and a fellow of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the American College of Preventive Medicine. She is a diplomat of the American College of Physician Executives and a member of the American Medical Association.

"I am excited to join Sera's board and its focus on meaningful and innovative solutions to improve the well-being of mothers and newborns," said Dr. Jane Barlow. "Sera's personalized approach to advancing the health of pregnant mothers and babies is an enabler of improved outcomes and cost savings that benefit mothers, babies and payers. I look forward to working with the management team and board as we advance strategies to achieve these goals."

Sera Prognostics is a leading health diagnostics company dedicated to improving the lives of women and babies through precision pregnancy care. Sera's mission is to deliver early, pivotal information in pregnancy to physicians, enabling them to improve the health of their patients, resulting in reductions in the costs of healthcare delivery. Sera has a robust pipeline of innovative diagnostic tests focused on the early prediction of preterm birth risk and other complications of pregnancy. Sera's precision medicine PreTRM® Test reports to a physician the individualized risk of spontaneous premature delivery in a pregnancy, enabling earlier proactive interventions in women with higher risk. Sera Prognostics is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Preterm birth is defined as any birth before 37 weeks' gestation and is the leading cause of illness and death in newborns. The 2021 March of Dimes Report Card shows that more than one in ten infants is born prematurely. Prematurity is associated with a significantly increased risk of major long-term medical complications, including learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, chronic respiratory illness, intellectual disability, seizures, and vision and hearing loss, and can generate significant costs throughout the lives of affected children. The annual health care costs to manage short- and long-term complications of prematurity in the United States were estimated to be approximately $25 billion for 2016.

The PreTRM® test is the only broadly validated, commercially available blood-based biomarker test that provides an early, accurate and individualized risk prediction for spontaneous preterm birth in asymptomatic singleton pregnancies. The PreTRM® test measures and analyzes proteins in the blood that are highly predictive of preterm birth. The PreTRM® test permits physicians to identify, during the 19th or 20th week of pregnancy, which women are at increased risk for preterm birth, enabling more informed, personalized clinical decisions based on each woman's individual risk. The PreTRM® test is ordered by a medical professional.

Sera Prognostics, the Sera Prognostics logo, The Pregnancy Company, and PreTRM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sera Prognostics, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements relating to Dr. Barlow's appointment helping to achieve the Company's vision of improving the health of mothers and babies and simultaneously realizing healthcare cost savings for society; and the company's strategic directives under the caption "About Sera Prognostics, Inc." These "forward-looking statements" are based on management's current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: net losses, cash generation, and the potential need to raise more capital; revenues from the PreTRM test representing substantially all Company revenues to date; the need for broad scientific and market acceptance of the PreTRM test; a concentrated number of material customers; our ability to introduce new products; potential competition; our proprietary biobank; critical suppliers; the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our operations, as well as the business or operations of third parties with whom we conduct business; estimates of total addressable market opportunity and forecasts of market growth; potential third-party payer coverage and reimbursement; new reimbursement methodologies applicable to the PreTRM test, including new CPT codes and payment rates for those codes; changes in FDA regulation of laboratory-developed tests; the intellectual property rights protecting our tests and market position; and other factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" contained in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, or Current Reports on Form 8-K filed with the SEC from time to time. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and the Company undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.

SOURCE Sera Prognostics, Inc.