Microbiology technology for microbial identification, infection control
Bruker launched new products and methods for the MALDI Biotyper (MBT) platform at the 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) 2021, held earlier this month.
The MBP platform is designed to enable molecular identification of bacteria, yeasts and fungi. It uses a molecular approach based on specific proteomic fingerprints from bacterial strains. Applications include clinical routine microbial identification, environmental and pharmaceutical analysis, taxonomical research, food and consumer product safety and quality control, as well as marine microbiology.
The company said the new MBT Lipid Xtract Kit (RUO) expands MALDI Biotyper’s microbial analysis capabilities to lipids fingerprinting and to rapid colistin-resistance testing.
Additionally, enhanced workflows include MBT FAST Shuttle IVD, a benchtop tool to standardize and optimize drying conditions for faster matrix crystallization and quicker drying of other droplet assays for sample preparation, and its new MBT Mycobacteria Kit (RUO), a preparation kit for mycobacteria after culture that allows fast sample preparation and safe inactivation by avoiding the need to boil mycobacteria samples, it said.
Bruker also announced that it has expanded the MALDI Biotyper Reference Libraries as well to cover more than 4,000 species: the MBT IVD Library has been expanded with 674 new species and now contains 3,813 species, while the MBT Mycobacteria (IVD and RUO) modules cover 182 Mycobacterium species, and the MBT Filamentous Fungi Suite (RUO) contains 247 species or species groups.
Meanwhile, its new IR Biotyper 3.1 software is said to connect MALDI Biotyper microbial species identification with IR Biotyper strain-typing results for hospital hygiene. The software is using classification tools based on artificial neural networks (ANN) to build models of known strains, serotypes or serogroups. Pre-defined models can be used for fast classification of unknown serotypes or serogroups, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella or Legionella pneumophila.
The software also includes new visualization tools to allow easier interpretation for classification or differentiation of strains, said the developer.
Dr Wolfgang Pusch, executive VP microbiology and diagnostics at Bruker Daltonics, commented: “We have expanded our capabilities in microbiology and infectious disease from testing protein signatures to research on lipids as a new molecular window for microbial analysis. Moreover, with the IR Biotyper 3.1 software our users can now use information on the microbial carbohydrate composition, another unique capability in microbial research and epidemiology.”