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Mirvie is developing a revolutionary, cell-free RNA test using a simple blood sample to assess the risk of developing severe pregnancy complications.

Obstetrics has improved in treating conditions like preterm birth and preeclampsia, but the ability to predict who’s at risk is “ripe for exploration and innovation.”

Earlier today Mirvie announced it is making rapid progress toward developing a simple, personalized blood test with the potential for early detection of pregnancy complications, such as preterm birth, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, which affect 1 in 5 women. Currently, there is no reliable way to identify if a mother is at risk for these significant pregnancy complications.…

With Mirvie, Quake and Jain are attempting to apply liquid biopsy technology more commonly found in oncology centers to pregnancy, a more common but significantly less funded area of research, according to Jain.

Low-cost methods for monitoring fetal development could improve prenatal care, especially in low-resource settings. By measuring the levels of certain placental RNA transcripts in maternal blood…

We asked Gates to choose this year’s list of inventions that will change the world for the better. I was honored when MIT Technology Review invited me to be the first guest curator of its 10 Breakthrough Technologies…

Fifteen million babies are born pre­maturely each year. Stephen Quake’s daughter, Zoe, was one of them: she arrived via emergency C-section after Quake and his wife, Athina, made a middle-of-the-night dash to the emergency room, a month before Zoe was due. She spent her first night in an incubator, and her father, a bioengineer then at Caltech, wondered why birth couldn’t be more predictable…