SERA PROGNOSTICS ANNOUNCES NEW AGREEMENT WITH MULTIPLAN, EXPANDING PATIENT ACCESS TO THE PRETRM® TEST
Sera Prognostics Inc. (NASDAQ: SERA) announced a new agreement with MultiPlan to enhance access to its PreTRM® Test, a blood-based biomarker test predicting the risk of preterm birth. This partnership will allow for better medical intervention through MultiPlan's extensive network of over 700 healthcare payers and 1.2 million providers. The PreTRM® Test is crucial for identifying high-risk pregnancies early, enabling personalized care plans. Sera aims to broaden adoption of this test, which is pivotal for improving maternal and neonatal health while reducing healthcare costs.
- New agreement with MultiPlan enhances access to PreTRM® Test.
- Partnership expands to over 700 healthcare payers and 1.2 million providers.
- PreTRM® Test is clinically validated for predicting preterm birth risk.
- Dependence on PreTRM test revenue for nearly all company income.
- Risks associated with broad scientific and market acceptance.
- Potential financial strains due to ongoing net losses and capital needs.
SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 1, 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 the execution of an agreement with MultiPlan, for participation in its PHCS and MultiPlan Networks. The agreement will help expand access to the PreTRM® Test, the company's proprietary proteomic blood test for measuring a woman's risk of spontaneous preterm birth, to allow more timely intervention to the members accessing MultiPlan's services through its more than 700 healthcare payers and the 1.2 million healthcare providers participating in MultiPlan's provider networks.
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. Ordered by medical professionals, the test empowers physicians to better identify, during the 19th or 20th week of pregnancy, women who are at increased risk for premature delivery. This early knowledge enables these women and their doctors to develop personalized intervention plans designed to improve the outcomes of newborns and mothers.
"Our agreement with MultiPlan emphasizes the acknowledgment by the healthcare ecosystem of the important role PreTRM plays in delivering pivotal information to physicians to help improve the health of pregnant women and newborns, and thereby lower healthcare costs," said Gregory C. Critchfield, MD, MS, chairman and chief executive officer of Sera Prognostics. "This additional significant milestone is another indicator of the growing interest in adopting the PreTRM® test and treat strategy as we build commercialization and reimbursement mechanisms with other payers and broaden adoption of the PreTRM® Test."
About Sera Prognostics, Inc.
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.
About MultiPlan
MultiPlan is committed to helping healthcare payers manage the cost of care, improve their competitiveness and inspire positive change. Leveraging sophisticated technology, data analytics and a team rich with industry experience, MultiPlan interprets clients' needs and customizes innovative solutions that combine its payment integrity, network-based and analytics-based services. MultiPlan is a trusted partner to over 700 healthcare payers in the commercial health, government and property and casualty markets. For more information, visit multiplan.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 2021 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
About the PreTRM® Test
The PreTRM® test, which is ordered by a medical professional, measures and analyzes proteins in the blood that are highly predictive of preterm birth.
Sera Prognostics, the Sera Prognostics logo, The Pregnancy Company, and PreTRM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sera Prognostics, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements relating to the agreement helping to expand access to the PreTRM® Test; growing interest in adopting the PreTRM® test and treat strategy; building commercialization and reimbursement mechanisms with other payers; broadening adoption of the PreTRM® Test; 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 Final Prospectus on Form S-1, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 14, 2021, as well as any updates to those risk factors filed from time to time in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, or Current Reports on Form 8-K. 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.
Contact
Investor Contact
Peter DeNardo, CapComm Partners
peter@capcommpartners.com
+1 (415) 389-6400
Media Contact
Erich Sandoval, Lazar FINN
Erich.sandoval@finnpartners.com
+1 (917) 497-2867
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sera-prognostics-announces-new-agreement-with-multiplan-expanding-patient-access-to-the-pretrm-test-301472067.html
SOURCE Sera Prognostics, Inc.
FAQ
What is the significance of the SERA agreement with MultiPlan?
How does the PreTRM® Test benefit pregnant women?
What are the potential risks for Sera Prognostics after this agreement?
What is the role of MultiPlan in the SERA partnership?
