Sera Prognostics Appoints Dr. Paul Kearney as Chief Data Officer
Brings extensive data science, bioinformatics and proteomics experience to foster further product innovation and informed healthcare insights into pregnancy
SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sera Prognostics Inc., The Pregnancy Company™ (NASDAQ:SERA), focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information to doctors and patients, today announced the appointment of Dr. Paul Kearney to the position of Chief Data Officer, effective October 1, 2021. As the chief data/analytics officer, Dr. Kearney will have responsibility to help direct, manage and analyze the large and growing data sets of Sera, both scientific and business, as Sera engages in studies designed to more fully characterize pregnancy and as commercial activities ramp during this phase of the company's development.
"We are delighted to have Paul Kearney bring his extensive data science capabilities and experience to the Sera Prognostics team as we further our mission as The Pregnancy Company™," said Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D., M.S., Chairman and CEO of Sera Prognostics. "Paul's deep experience and fundamental understanding of data will help Sera build a solid bridge at the intersection of business, healthcare, bioinformatics, and innovation, where critical societal and clinical unmet needs can be addressed through partnerships, data exploration, and individualized maternal and prenatal healthcare. These approaches are most pertinent for Sera to effectively address healthcare disparities and enormous challenges that exist in pregnancy."
Prior to joining Sera Prognostics, Dr. Kearney co-founded multiple successful biotech companies and data enterprises, resulting in the development and commercialization of breakthrough products in the disease areas of oncology, pregnancy, and food allergy, as well as technological products in bioinformatics and proteomics. He has extensive experience building and nurturing integrated teams, conducting clinical research, developing evidence for improved health outcomes, and fund raising. Dr. Kearney has published over 100 papers in diverse areas and has been awarded over 12 patents. Previously, he worked in positions at the Institute for Systems Biology, Integrated Diagnostics, Caprion (now CellCarta), Data Incites, Bioinformatics Solutions, and AllerGenis. Dr. Kearney received his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics/Computer Science from the University of Toronto and was a member of the Computer Science Faculty of the University of Waterloo.
"Sera Prognostics has an expansive and unique vision for utilizing novel biotechnology tools and innovative machine learning techniques to address the biggest clinical challenges associated with pregnancies," said Dr. Kearney. "It is an enormous opportunity to partner with the world class team at Sera to address these challenges and improve health outcomes for mothers and babies."
About Sera Prognostics, Inc.
Sera Prognostics is a leading health diagnostics company dedicated to improving the lives of women and babies through precision pregnancy care. Sera's mission is to deliver early, pivotal information in pregnancy to physicians, enabling them to improve the health of their patients, resulting in reductions in the costs of healthcare delivery. Sera has a robust pipeline of innovative diagnostic tests focused on the early prediction of preterm birth risk and other complications of pregnancy. Sera's precision medicine PreTRM® test reports to a physician the individualized risk of spontaneous premature delivery in a pregnancy, enabling earlier proactive interventions in women with higher risk. Sera Prognostics is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.
About Preterm Birth
Preterm birth is defined as any birth before 37 weeks' gestation and is the leading cause of illness and death in newborns. The 2020 March of Dimes Report Card shows that of approximately 3.8 million babies born annually in the United States, more than one in ten is born prematurely. Prematurity is associated with a significantly increased risk of major long-term medical complications, including learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, chronic respiratory illness, intellectual disability, seizures, and vision and hearing loss, and can generate significant costs throughout the lives of affected children. The annual health care costs to manage short- and long-term complications of prematurity in the United States were estimated to be approximately $25 billion for 2016.
About the PreTRM® Test
The PreTRM® test is the only broadly clinically validated, commercially available blood-based biomarker test that provides an early, accurate and individualized risk prediction for spontaneous preterm birth in asymptomatic singleton pregnancies. The PreTRM® test measures and analyzes proteins in the blood that are highly predictive of preterm birth. The PreTRM® test empowers physicians to better identify, during the 19th or 20th week of pregnancy, women are at increased risk for preterm birth, enabling more informed, personalized clinical decisions based on each woman's individual risk. The PreTRM® test is ordered by a medical professional.
Sera Prognostics, the Sera Prognostics logo, The Pregnancy Company, and PreTRM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sera Prognostics, Inc in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements relating to the Company more fully characterizing pregnancy; addressing critical societal and clinical unmet needs through partnerships, data exploration, and individualized maternal and prenatal healthcare; and the company's strategic directives under the caption "About Sera Prognostics, Inc." These "forward-looking statements" are based on management's current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: net losses, cash generation, and the potential need to raise more capital; revenues from the PreTRM test representing substantially all Company revenues to date; the need for broad scientific and market acceptance of the PreTRM test; a concentrated number of material customers; our ability to introduce new products; potential competition; our proprietary biobank; critical suppliers; the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our operations, as well as the business or operations of third parties with whom we conduct business; estimates of total addressable market opportunity and forecasts of market growth; potential third-party payer coverage and reimbursement; new reimbursement methodologies applicable to the PreTRM test, including new CPT codes and payment rates for those codes; changes in FDA regulation of laboratory-developed tests; the intellectual property rights protecting our tests and market position; and other factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" contained in our Final Prospectus on Form S-1, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 14, 2021, as well as any updates to those risk factors filed from time to time in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, or Current Reports on Form 8-K. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and the Company undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.
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