Natera Update

Hello GenderDreamers. I am sad to report that Natera will no longer be doing PGD for fresh transfers for the time being. This will be in effect 3/1/13 for most centers and 3/15/13 for a few special cases.

Natera will continue to offer PGD for day 5 all freeze specimens.

This change is being done for purely business reasons. Natera and myself still believe that we have the best PGD product on the market.

Natera has made a decision to focus the manpower that they have on the new Panorama test for the immediate future. As some of you are aware, Natera has launched Panorama, a non-invasive pre-natal diagnostic test that allows us to determine whether the child the patient is carrying is has one of the major aneuploidy syndromes and also whether it is a boy or girl (as well as paternity). Quite simply, the response to Panorama has been overwhelming and Natera has had to make the a decision use its available manpower to address this demand. In taking the fresh PGD testing off-line, Natera will be able to focus on servicing Panorama and a likely IPO over the year 2013. Natera remains committed to PGD and when fresh Natera PGD is relaunched, hopefully in 2014/15, we will be using sequencing technology along with our proprietary infomatics. This will allow very rapid turn around times and easily accommodate day 5 biopsies with fresh day 6 transfers or day 3 biopsies with day 5 transfers. I will be personally exploring the question as to whether we improve pregnancy rates using Natera and all freeze or aCGH with a day 6 transfer. This remains an open question and I intend to accumulate data on this matter and present it to the public as soon as I have sufficient data to present.

I will remain Laboratory Director for Natera for the immediate future until a suitable replacement can be found and we can transition to the new Director. The responsibilities of being Laboratory Director of what is rapidly becoming a very large company require more attention than I can manage and still practice medicine. I will remain Laboratory Director of the PGD division after this transition has been completed.

As for my practice, I will continue to offer Natera Day 5 biopsy on ‘all freeze’ cases but will be forced to transition to day 5/day 6 aCGH for all fresh cases. I am working with an aCGH laboratory to create a hybrid test that will improve accuracy with the Y chromosome and other small chromosomes. For cases currently in process at my center, we will continue to use the Natera day 3 with day 5 transfer for all cases biopsied on or before 3/15/13. All cases beyond that will be aCGH day 5 biopsy and day 6 transfer.