UNITY eliminates paternal DNA requirement

This is a workflow wedge disguised as a science breakthrough. In standard carrier screening, the mother is tested first, then the father has to be found, consented, and sampled before the clinician can estimate fetal risk for most recessive conditions. UNITY skips that second step by using the mother’s blood draw to assess fetal risk directly, which turns a two person, multi visit process into a one sample lab order that fits cleanly into a routine OB visit.1 2 3 4 5

• The practical bottleneck in traditional screening is not just lab science, it is partner completion. BillionToOne cites incomplete partner screening as a key reason older workflows miss affected pregnancies, and notes that even when a partner is tested, the tested partner may not always be the biological father. Direct fetal risk assessment avoids both failure points.2 5
• This product sits between carrier screening and classic NIPT. Natera’s Horizon historically centered on finding parental carrier status, and older ordering materials required both biological parental samples in some workflows. Natera only launched its own paternal unavailable follow on test, Fetal Focus, in August 2025, which shows how differentiated BillionToOne’s earlier one sample approach was.6 7 8
• The commercial payoff is simplicity for OB practices. BillionToOne sells into OB GYNs, hospitals, and fertility clinics, processes testing in its own CLIA lab, and has scaled prenatal volume from 500,000 tests by mid 2024 to 1 million UNITY tests by early 2025. That kind of volume growth fits a product that removes a common follow up task from staff and patients.1 3 9

The next step is broader direct fetal assessment from the same maternal sample. BillionToOne has already expanded UNITY Fetal Risk Screen to larger panels and is layering on Unity Confirm for patients who want more certainty without CVS or amniocentesis. That pushes prenatal genetics toward a single front door, where one blood draw handles carrier status, fetal risk, and confirmatory follow up.2 4 10