Premaitha Health plc

("Premaitha" or the "Company")

Premaitha signs new partner to offer NIPT solution in East Asia

Manchester, UK - 23 November 2017: Premaitha Health plc (AIM: NIPT), a leading international molecular diagnostics group focused on non-invasive prenatal testing ("NIPT"), announces that it has signed an agreement with a new laboratory partner (the "Partner") to offer an NIPT screening solution in a new East Asian territory (the "Territory") for Premaitha.  

The Partner is a private reference laboratory, which will provide the NIPT screening solution to its network of hospitals and clinics in the region. The installation of the laboratory is set to be completed in H1 2018. The Partner will be operating in an already established NIPT market with attractive market dynamics and growth prospects. 

Premaitha offers advanced NIPT solutions, which estimate the risk of a fetus having Down's syndrome and other genetic disorders. The NIPT solution is being introduced in the Territory through Yourgene Bioscience ("Yourgene"), which was acquired by Premaitha in March 2017. The solution allows clinicians and laboratories to offer customised screening, from full clinical service through to local laboratory set-ups with remote cloud-based NIPT analysis.

The NIPT solution being implemented in the Territory utilises the sequencing and bioinformatics expertise of Yourgene and the clinical understanding, IVD and quality standards of Premaitha, enabling pregnant women and their families to access fast, safe and reliable tests and reducing the need for unnecessary invasive tests, with their associated risks, stress and anxiety.

Dr Stephen Little, CEO of Premaitha Health, commented: "We are delighted to announce a further new international territory for Premaitha, which provides entry into another high growth market for NIPT. Despite Tuesday's judgment, the impact of which is limited to the UK, we continue to expand Premaitha's footprint through our geographic diversification strategy into territories unaffected by Illumina's patents."

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014.

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About Premaitha

Premaitha is an international molecular diagnostics group which uses the latest advances in DNA analysis technology to develop safer, faster and regulatory approved genetic screening tests. The Group's primary focus is on non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT) for pregnant women - an emerging, multi-billion dollar global market.

Premaitha's IONA® test was launched in 2015 as the first CE-IVD NIPT test in Europe. It enables laboratories and healthcare practitioners to offer a complete CE-marked NIPT system in-house. The IONA® test is performed on a maternal blood sample - which contains traces of fetal DNA - and estimates the risk of a fetus being affected with Down's syndrome or other genetic conditions.

Unlike existing prenatal screening methods, due to its high level of accuracy, the IONA® test can significantly reduce the number of women subjected to unnecessary invasive follow up diagnostic procedures, such as amniocentesis, which are costly, resource intensive and carry a risk of miscarriage.

In March 2017, Premaitha acquired Yourgene Bioscience, a specialist next generation sequencing and bioinformatics company based in Taiwan, with its own NIPT screening test that operates on the same Thermo Fisher next-generation sequencing platform as Premaitha's IONA® test. Yourgene brings significant benefits to the Group through expanded market access in Asia - the world's fastest growing NIPT market - as well as opportunities for cross-selling and the ability to jointly develop expanded test content both within NIPT and beyond.

Premaitha is headquartered in Manchester, England, with Yourgene offices in Taipei and Singapore. Its shares trade on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (AIM: NIPT). For further information, please visit www.premaitha.com. Follow us on twitter @PremaithaHealth.