News
SALT LAKE CITY, April 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sera Prognostics, Inc., The Pregnancy Company®, focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information to doctors and patients, today announced the appointment of Benjamin G. Jackson as General Counsel. Mr. Jackson joins Sera Prognostics to develop its internal legal and intellectual property capabilities, as Sera transitions from a rigorous scientific and data-driven clinical stage company into an emerging commercial-stage company.
For the last 15 years, Ben has represented Myriad Genetics, Inc., beginning as a law clerk, initially focusing on intellectual property, and ultimately advancing to become General Counsel of a global molecular diagnostics enterprise. Mr. Jackson is viewed as a thought leader who has written and presented extensively in the area of molecular diagnostics intellectual property, while also possessing broad experience in a wide range of legal matters, including patent and commercial litigation, M&A transactions, interactions with government and private payers, corporate legal policies and contracting.
“It is great to have the opportunity to be working again very closely with Ben Jackson, as Sera Prognostics commercially distributes pivotal pregnancy information to physicians and expectant mothers,” said Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D., M.S., Chairman and CEO. “I am convinced that Ben’s legal skills, business acumen and real-world experience in complex and weighty legal matters will help Sera to better achieve its vision of improving the health of mothers and babies and reducing the costs of healthcare delivery.”
“Sera has made great strides in building evidence that PreTRM® testing improves the ability to identify pregnancies that are at higher risk of preterm delivery, thereby enabling proactive interventions designed to help address the immense burden of premature birth,” said Ben Jackson. “I am personally energized to join Sera, working with Greg and the rest of the talented Sera team to help drive the company’s progress to improve the lives of mothers and newborns. I believe Sera has great potential to help mitigate the enormous personal, societal and economic consequences of premature births and other adverse pregnancy consequences.”
About Sera Prognostics, Inc.
Sera Prognostics is the leading health diagnostics company dedicated to improving the lives of women and babies through precision pregnancy care. Sera delivers pivotal information in early pregnancy to physicians and expectant mothers, designed to enable them to improve maternal and neonatal health and reduce healthcare costs. Sera’s precision medicine PreTRM® test reports to a physician the individualized risk of premature delivery in a pregnancy, enabling earlier proactive interventions in women with higher risk. In addition to the PreTRM® test, Sera has a robust pipeline of innovative blood-based biomarker tests focused on the early prediction of other serious complications of pregnancy. Sera Prognostics is located in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.seraprognostics.com.
About Preterm Birth
Preterm birth is defined as any birth before 37 weeks’ gestation and is the leading cause of illness and death in newborns. The 2020 March of Dimes Report Card shows that of approximately 3.8 million babies born annually in the U.S., more than one in ten is born prematurely.1 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 US health care costs to manage complications of prematurity were estimated to be approximately $25 billion for 2016.2
About the PreTRM® Test
The PreTRM® test is the only broadly clinically validated commercially available blood test that provides an early individual 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, as early as 19 weeks of pregnancy, which women are at increased risk for premature delivery, enabling more informed clinical decisions based on each woman’s individual risk, so that her care can be personalized to address her risk. The PreTRM® test is ordered by a medical professional. For more information about the PreTRM® test, please visit www.PreTRM.com and the PreTRM® Test YouTube Channel. You can also join the conversation on Facebook and @PreTRM.
References
- Martin JA, et al. Births: Final Data for 2019. National Vital Statistics Reports; vol 70 no 2. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2021. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:100472
- Waitzman NJ, et al. Preterm birth lifetime costs in the United States in 2016: An update. Semin Perinatol. 2021 Jan 24:151390. doi: 10.1016/j.semperi.2021.151390. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33541716.
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