UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is going to offer pregnant women a blood test which uses circulating fetal DNA to determine the risk of trisomies. The current gold standard is ultrasound neuchal scan.  This is the first circulating DNA test to be offered free of charge in the NHS. There is a long list of companies that are developing ‘liquid biopsy’ tests for cancer which are at an earlier stage of validation than fetal trisomy tests and the leader in gene seqencing, Illumina has announced that it is entering the fray with a new venture called Grail.

Leading players in ctDNA field are:

Seqanome, Guardant Health, Adaptive Biotechnologies, Foundation Health, Trovagen

Safer Down’s test backed for NHS use

Pregnant women in the UK should soon get a safer and more accurate test for Down’s syndrome, on the NHS, to reduce the risk of miscarriage.