--Aligns With Growing Focus on Early Identification and Management of Preterm Birth Risk--
SALT LAKE CITY, June 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Sera Prognostics Inc., The Pregnancy Company® (Nasdaq: SERA), focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information, today acknowledged recent legislative action in Illinois aimed at expanding access to evidence-based approaches for identifying and managing the risk of preterm birth among pregnant individuals.
The legislation amends the Illinois Public Aid Code to require the state's medical assistance program (Medicaid) to provide coverage and reimbursement for prescribed proteomic blood tests that are used to identify and manage the risk of spontaneous preterm birth. The law further requires coverage and reimbursement of care management services and other interventions shown to improve patient outcomes. Sera's PreTRM® Test is the only broadly validated, commercially available blood-based test of its kind, with clinical evidence demonstrating its ability to identify risk early and, when paired with interventions that include care management, improve outcomes.
Preterm birth remains a leading cause of maternal and neonatal complications with 250 babies born preterm per week in Illinois (13,042 preterm births in 2024).1 Access to early risk assessment tools is increasingly recognized as an important component of improving outcomes. Preterm birth is associated with significant financial and clinical burden on Medicaid programs, which finance nearly half of all births nationwide.2 By delivering on evidence-based innovation in preterm birth prediction through coverage of proven proteomic testing, Illinois's actions can focus efforts on improving neonatal outcomes for their approximately 50,000 Medicaid births annually.1
"We are encouraged to see policymakers prioritizing innovative, evidence-based approaches to improving maternal health," said Zhenya Lindgardt, President and CEO of Sera Prognostics. "Expanding access to proteomic testing represents an important step toward enabling earlier identification of risk and more personalized care for pregnant individuals. Illinois is demonstrating leadership by advancing coverage for innovative testing approaches that have the potential to improve outcomes for pregnant individuals across the state."
Sera's proteomic testing approach is designed to provide actionable insights into a patient's risk of spontaneous preterm birth, supporting clinicians in more informed care management decisions and delivering preventative care. The new policy initiative by Illinois reflects growing recognition of the role proteomic testing can play in improving pregnancy outcomes.
While implementation details, timing, and coverage parameters associated with the Illinois initiative are still emerging, Sera is working to support implementation efforts as coverage frameworks are defined, in collaboration with policymakers and other healthcare stakeholders. Policy advancements focused on expanding access to risk stratification tools have the potential to contribute to broader improvements in maternal and neonatal health outcomes while supporting affordability in health care.
Sera believes that continued collaboration among policymakers, providers, and healthcare systems will be important to ensure effective implementation and patient access as programs evolve.
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 provide early, pivotal pregnancy information to improve the health of mothers and newborns, 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 headquartered 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 2025 March of Dimes Report Card shows that, for the fourth consecutive year, the United States earned a D+ grade for preterm birth, marking the longest stretch of the lowest grade in Report Card history. 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 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 permits physicians to identify, during the weeks 18 through 20 of pregnancy, which women are at increased risk for preterm birth and its complications, enabling more informed, personalized clinical decisions based on each woman's individual risk. The PreTRM® Test is ordered by a medical professional.
Sera, Sera Prognostics, the Sera Prognostics logo, The Pregnancy Company, and PreTRM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sera Prognostics, Inc. in the United States 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 expanding access to proteomic testing; implementation efforts and coverage frameworks; 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; 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 Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as any updates to those risk factors filed from time to time in our periodic and current reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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.
Investor Contact
Jennifer Zibuda, Head of Investor Relations
jzibuda@sera.com
+1 (801) 396-8043
Media Contact
Nicole Kaplan at Allison Worldwide
sera@allisonworldwide.com
+1 (847) 721-6033
References: 1. March of Dimes. 2025 March of Dimes report card for Illinois. PeriStats. Published 2025. Accessed June 23, 2026. 2. Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC). Access in brief: pregnant women and Medicaid. Washington, DC: MACPAC; 2018. https://www.macpac.gov/publication/access-in-brief-pregnant-women-and-medicaid/
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SOURCE Sera Prognostics, Inc.
