Thermo Fisher Scientific have entered into a collaboration to develop clinical mass spectrometry-based proteomics assays to monitor fetal health in utero and assess the risk of adverse outcomes, including preterm birth and preeclampsia.
This new collaboration recognizes the challenges faced by medical professionals who have few tools available for noninvasive risk stratification for adverse pregnancy outcomes. By combining NX Prenatal’s NeXosome platform with Thermo Fisher’s liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) instrumentation, the workflows can address the reliability, accuracy, and precision of the analytical solutions currently available to clinical scientists.
The unique NeXosome technology is used to enrich maternal blood samples for microparticles, such as exosomes, which play key roles in maintaining certain balances between the mother and fetus during pregnancy. Aberrations in these balances have been shown to correlate with the likelihood of adverse pregnancy outcomes. Merging the NeXosome platform with Thermo Fisher LC-MS technology has the potential to generate fast, efficient, and accurate data for the analysis of exosome-derived proteomic biomarkers, which may lead to increased information about maternal and fetal health during pregnancy. Ultimately, the analysis has the potential to support obstetrical care decisions in conjunction with traditional clinical assessments.
