Company looks to predict premature births

Obstetrician Jodie Rai has partnered with researcher Robert Kokenyesi to form Cervimark LLC, based at the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise incubator in Creve Coeura, MO. Cervimark aims to develop a test that will predict which women are likely to deliver at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, the definition of a pre-term birth. If Cervimark succeeds, its test would allow doctors to intervene in the limited ways available to them--by moving rural patients closer to hospitals with neonatal intensive care units, for example--and would identify a group of patients who could be tapped as volunteers for clinical trials in the development of new and better treatments.