Bruker Announces New Microbiology Products and Workflows
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At the 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, Bruker launched new products and methods for the market-leading MALDI Biotyper® (MBT) platform.
The MALDI Biotyper sirius® system supports workflows for the rapid, nearly universal and cost-effective microbial identification by ‘proteomic fingerprinting’ from culture plates and from positive blood cultures with the MBT Sepsityper® IVD Kit. Moreover, the unique MBT platform offers rapid functional antibiotic resistance testing with the MBT STAR®-Carba IVD and MBT STAR®-Cepha IVD Kits, and comprehensive mycobacteria analysis after culture.
The new MBT Lipid Xtract™ kit now expands the research capabilities into rapid lipid testing, even beyond rapid microbial identification. The MBT Lipid Xtract™ Kit requires the negative ion mode of the MALDI Biotyper® sirius, and it can be used for fast and easy extraction of lipids. For example, certain lipid A modifications are considered as molecular markers for colistin resistance in gram-negative bacteria. Colistin is a crucial antibiotic of last resort in the fight against resistance.
Dr. Gerald Larrouy-Maumus, Group Leader at the MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology & Infection at Imperial College London, UK, commented: “The MALDI Biotyper® sirius with its negative ion capability enables MALDI-based microbial analysis at a new level by not only detecting protein signatures, but with additional information on the lipid composition of microbes. The MBT Lipid Xtract™ Kit makes this available with a quality-controlled commercial kit. The MBT Lipid Xtract™ Kit is a game changer in bacterial lipid analysis as it allows fast (15 minutes hands-on time), robust and reproducible analysis of complex lipids from a single colony. An important application is to analyze the lipid A composition of the cell membranes of gram-negative bacteria, which gives insights into a potential colistin-resistance, and into lipopolysaccharide (LPS) assembly and biosynthesis.”
Further product introductions include the MBT FAST™ Shuttle IVD (and RUO), a benchtop tool to standardize and optimize drying conditions for faster matrix crystallization and quicker drying of other droplet assays for sample preparation. The new MBT Mycobacteria kit is a preparation kit for mycobacteria after culture that allows fast sample preparation and safe inactivation by avoiding the need to boil mycobacteria samples. It is used in combination with the MBT Mycobacteria Library and software module which provides a reference library of 182 mycobacterium species.
The MALDI Biotyper® Reference Libraries have also been enhanced further: 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. Altogether, the MALDI Biotyper® Reference Libraries now cover over 4,000 species or species groups.
The new IR Biotyper® 3.1 software connects the IR Biotyper® for fast, easy and cost-effective strain typing for hospital hygiene management with the MALDI Biotyper®. The software is using state of the art 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, e.g., of Streptococcus pneumoniae, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella or Legionella pneumophila. The software includes new visualization tools to allow easier interpretation for classification or differentiation of strains.
Dr. Wolfgang Pusch, the Executive Vice President Microbiology and Diagnostics at Bruker Daltonics, concluded: “With the market-leading MALDI Biotyper® sirius and the new MBT Lipid Xtract™ Kit 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.”
