BillionToOne Expands Executive Team with Dr. Haywood Brown as Chief Medical Officer, Prenatal

Visionary Healthcare Leader Will Oversee BillionToOne's Prenatal Medical Strategy

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- BillionToOne, a molecular diagnostics company with a mission to create powerful and accurate tests that are accessible to all, announces the appointment of Dr. Haywood L. Brown as Chief Medical Officer, Prenatal. Dr. Brown joins BillionToOne as the company has recently celebrated the milestone of 1 million UNITY tests.

A distinguished obstetrician and gynecologist with over three decades of experience in academic leadership, clinical care, and research, Dr. Brown has dedicated his career to maternal and fetal health, with an emphasis on addressing health disparities. Dr. Brown served in numerous local and national leadership positions, including as the past President of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM), the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society (AGOS), and as the former Obstetrics and Gynecology Section Chair for the National Medical Association. Most recently, he was USF Health's Senior Associate Vice President of Academic and Faculty Affairs and Vice Dean of Faculty Affairs. Previously, Dr. Brown served as the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Duke University Medical Center, where he held both the Roy T. Parker and F. Bayard Carter Endowed Professorships.

From 2017-2018, Dr. Brown served as the 68th President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), where he focused on women's health equity and postpartum care. During his tenure as President, he advocated for maternal mortality prevention and affordable contraception as an essential health benefit under the Affordable Care Act, and for the establishment of nationwide State Maternal Mortality Reviews.

Dr. Brown earned his undergraduate degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and his Medical Degree from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He completed his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences, Knoxville, and his fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine/Grady Memorial Hospital.

"We are honored to welcome Dr. Haywood Brown to BillionToOne," said Dr. Oguzhan Atay, co-founder and CEO, BillionToOne. "Dr. Brown is one of the most influential leaders in the prenatal ecosystem, with a career dedicated to advancing provider education and addressing healthcare disparities."

"The precision and comprehensiveness of BillionToOne's molecular diagnostic platform marks a new chapter in prenatal screening," said Dr. Haywood Brown, BillionToOne Chief Medical Officer, Prenatal. "After three decades in maternal-fetal medicine, I recognize the transformative potential of technologies that can provide detailed genetic insights through non-invasive methods. I look forward to working alongside this talented team to further advance these breakthrough solutions and strengthen BillionToOne's position at the forefront of molecular diagnostics."

BillionToOne's unique technology, Quantitative Counting Templates (QCT™), enables counting DNA molecules with single base-pair precision, and it has allowed the company to develop truly differentiated tests that redefine the possibilities of molecular diagnostics.

BillionToOne's UNITY Fetal Risk™ Screen is the first and only prenatal test of its kind, leveraging fetal cell-free DNA to provide direct insights into fetal risk for aneuploidies and common recessively inherited conditions, such as sickle cell disease, spinal muscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis—all without requiring a male partner's blood sample or amniocentesis. This advancement has proven particularly valuable in maternity care deserts, where access to specialized maternal-fetal medicine care is limited. The company's complementary oncology liquid biopsy products, Northstar Select® and Northstar Response®, enable clinicians to select and monitor patient therapies. Northstar Select® achieves a 2-5x lower limit of detection compared to other assays on the market, while Northstar Response®, a methylation-based ctDNA assay, offers 10x higher precision than SNV-based assays in assessing treatment response across different cancer types.

To learn more about BillionToOne, please visit www.billiontoone.com.

About BillionToOne
Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, BillionToOne is a precision diagnostics company on a mission to make molecular diagnostics more powerful, efficient, and accessible for all. The company's patented Quantitative Counting Templates™ (QCT™) molecular counting platform is the only multiplex technology that can accurately count DNA molecules at the single-molecule level. For more information, visit www.billiontoone.com.

Media Contact: [email protected] 

SOURCE BillionToOne