One-on-One with Natera founder Jonathan Sheena

Jonathan Sheena of Natera.

The prenatal testing industry is shaping up as one of the most competitive in the medical diagnostics arena, and the Bay Area has become a center of innovation and new-company formation with the likes of Aria Diagnostics in San Jose, Verinata Health in Redwood City and Natera Inc. in San Carlos. What's more, as my colleague Diana Samuels wrote earlier this year, the fight has turned to the courtroom as Bay Area test makers challenge each other and Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM), the San Diego-based company that was first to the market with a non-invasive test. The competition makes it all the more important for these companies to prove that their technology is best, and one of the more aggressive companies in that regard has been Natera. I spoke recently with Jonathan Sheena, Natera's founder and chief technology officer, about the company's non-invasive prenatal tests, its ongoing clinical trials, its hiring and its attempts to win insurance coverage for its tests.