The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a patent No. 8,008,018 to Verinata Health's Fetal Aneuploidy determination method.
The patent covers methods to determine the presence or absence of a fetal aneuploidy, or an abnormal number of fetal chromosomes, by analysis of blood samples from pregnant women, which contain both fetal and maternal DNA.
The ‘017 patent also contains claims directed to the determination of fetal aneuploidies by massively parallel DNA sequencing.
Verinata Health CEO Caren Mason said as an exclusive licensee for these patents, they are pleased that the USPTO has recognized this invention from the Quake laboratory at Stanford that provides the foundation for their first non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test.