trisomy 21

Several analysts said that the decision by UHC, the largest private payor in the US, will especially benefit Natera.

The company also said that it has acquired Beijing-based food safety testing firm Meizheng Group. The deal is expected to expand PerkinElmer's food safety capabilities.

The company and Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island are currently evaluating the technology to determine the performance of the test.

During the first year of the TRIDENT-2 study, 74,000 women opted for NIPT, which was switched from in-house-developed platforms to Illumina's VeriSeq in May of this year.

By early 2020, the UK company plans to develop a version of its Iona test that uses Illumina's sequencing technology.

A randomized clinical trial from France revealed similar miscarriage rates in women who had cell-free DNA screening for trisomy 21 prior to invasive testing.

The partners will test PerkinElmer's Vanadis NIPT platform on samples from 2,650 women to determine detection and false positive rates.

The report states that using NIPD for trisomy 21 in high-risk women could "probably reduce" the total number of invasive tests though the data is incomplete.