Thermo Fisher Scientific will combine its liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) instrumentation with NX Prenatal’s NeXosome platform to develop proteomics assays designed to offer noninvasive risk assessments of pregnancy outcomes, through a collaboration whose value was not disclosed.
The collaboration aims to develop diagnostics to monitor fetal health in utero and assess the risk of adverse outcomes, including preterm birth and preeclampsia.
The companies plan to develop workflows that are intended to improve upon the reliability, accuracy and precision of the few analytical solutions currently available to advance noninvasive risk stratification for adverse pregnancy outcomes, Thermo Fisher said.
“Our collaboration with NX Prenatal is aiming to enable us to better evaluate maternal and fetal biomarkers during pregnancy that correlate with adverse outcomes, such as preterm birth,” Brad Hart, senior director, clinical research, chromatography and mass spectrometry, Thermo Fisher, said yesterday in a statement. “The co-development of a commercially available clinical mass spectrometry-based proteomics assay has the potential to provide a diagnostic solution to both clinical scientists and medical professionals offering more confidence in the evaluation of novel biomarkers that can support a safe delivery and healthy future for mother and baby.”
NX Prenatal’s NeXosome technology is designed to enrich maternal blood samples for circulating microparticles, such as microvesicles or exosomes, that play key roles in mediating and facilitating intercellular communication between tissues of the maternal system and the fetus during pregnancy. A single placental cell, for example, may shed up to 10,000 of these microparticles each day in order to communicate its status to other cells.
