News

SALT LAKE CITY, May 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sera Prognostics, Inc., The Pregnancy Company® (“Sera”), focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information to doctors and patients, today announced a novel strategic commercial partnership with Anthem, Inc.

Anthem, whose health plans cover more than 10% of U.S. pregnancies annually, will make PreTRM® Tests available to pregnant members as part of a multi-year contract with Sera. Anthem is the nation’s second largest health insurer with more than 40 million members nationwide.

Through this collaboration, a significant number of physicians and patients in the U.S. gain access to early and accurate predictions of preterm birth to enable more informed decision-making during pregnancy.

“Prematurity is a significant threat to the health and well-being of both mother and baby,” said Elizabeth Canis, Vice President Emerging Businesses & Partnerships at Anthem. “By working with Sera to make this test available to our pregnant members, we can identify potential problems before they become lifelong challenges. Our goal is to positively improve the lives of our youngest members before they are even born. Anthem’s strong community presence and provider partnerships enable Sera to make this important test available to more physicians and patients.”

Ten percent of all births in the U.S. are preterm, but traditional methods fail to detect approximately 80% of pregnancies in which spontaneous preterm deliveries occur.  The PreTRM® Test alerts expecting mothers and their physicians of the risk of preterm birth so they can explore clinical interventions and protocols that may extend the pregnancy, and potentially result in better health outcomes for both mother and baby.

“We are excited about this strategic partnership with Anthem to address the ongoing U.S. healthcare crisis of prematurity, to  accelerate delivering pivotal informationto physicians with the goal of improving the health of pregnant women and newborns, and simultaneously improving the economics of healthcare,” said Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D., Chairman and CEO of Sera Prognostics.  “We will work to extend the impact of our strategy through broader adoption of the PreTRM® Test by other payers over time.”

About Anthem, Inc.
Anthem is a leading health benefits company dedicated to improving lives and communities and making healthcare simpler. Through its affiliated companies, Anthem serves more than 107 million people, including approximately 43 million within its family of health plans. We aim to be the most innovative, valuable and inclusive partner. For more information, please visit www.antheminc.com or follow @AnthemInc on Twitter.

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, 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 premature delivery in a pregnancy, enabling earlier proactive interventions in women with higher risk. Sera Prognostics is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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 United States, more than one in ten 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.

About the PreTRM® Test
The PreTRM® Test is the only broadly clinically 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.

Contact
Erich Sandoval, Lazar FINN
erich.sandoval@finnpartners.com
+1 917 497 2867