IONA® Nx awarded contract with St George’s NHS Hospital
Manchester, UK – 7 October 2020: Yourgene (AIM: YGEN), the international molecular diagnostics group, announces that it has been awarded the contract for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) using its newly-launched IONA® Nx NIPT Workflow ('IONA® Nx'), by the prestigious St George’s NHS Trust Foundation in Tooting, South London (“St George’s”). The contract, subject to signing by both parties, has been awarded after a competitive tender process and will extend Yourgene’s existing partnership with St George’s for a further three years, with testing volumes expected to increase over the contract period.
St George’s was the first NIPT NHS laboratory in the UK and the first NHS Trust to provide NIPT testing to high risk pregnant women. St George’s has a reputation for innovation in NIPT introducing these tests well ahead of the National Screening committee’s January 2016 recommendation to do so. Yourgene won its first tender with St George’s on 23 March 2015 with the Company’s IONA® test to provide NIPT testing for women within South East England and to other NHS trusts and private practices across the UK.
Since that first tender, the lab has been offering the IONA® test under the St George’s brand of the SAFE test. The new contract will see St George’s transition over to the IONA® Nx NIPT Workflow which has been developed to run on the Illumina NextSeq 550Dx instrument.
Lyn Rees, CEO of Yourgene, commented: “We were chosen out of five companies that bid for the tender; I believe this is a true reflection of the excellent service and continued support that Yourgene offers its customers. The team at St George’s have been early adopters and true champions of the benefits of NIPT for all pregnant women as part of antenatal screening. We have already been working in close partnership with St George’s over the last few years, and look forward to strengthening our relationship with them further over the next few years.”
This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014.
