At the European MALDI Biotyper User Group (‘BUG’) meeting, Bruker Daltonics announced today that the Institute for Medical Microbiology of the University Medical Center in Goettingen, Germany (Universitätsmedizin Göttingen, or UMG), has installed the Bruker MALDI Biotyper as their next-generation, rapid molecular microbial identification system.
The UMG Institute for Medical Microbiology is responsible for research, teaching and diagnosis of bacteriological, mycological and parasitological infectious diseases. Moreover the Institute is also the German National Reference Centre for systemic mycosis and runs hundreds of yeasts and fungi samples per year.
The UMG globally acknowledged yeasts and fungi specialists have extensive experience in mycosis infectious diseases, as they characterize and identify such demanding microorganisms on a daily basis.
The identification of yeasts and fungi on the species level is one of the most challenging tasks of many microbiology laboratories. It has been shown in several peer-reviewed publications that the MALDI Biotyper based molecular fingerprint of yeasts provides significant differentiation on the species level. Currently more than 40 different Candida species can be reliably identified when using the MALDI Biotyper reference library.
This is a major improvement in comparison to the previous differentiation of just Candida glabrata and non-glabrata by classical biochemical methods. The MALDI Biotyper library of yeasts strains provides for a more thorough characterization of these microorganisms.
Moreover, the Institute for Medical Microbiology participates in Bruker´s efforts in establishing an international group of experts working on the identification of multicellular fungi with the MALDI Biotyper approach.
Senior physician Priv. Doz. Dr. med. Michael Weig (UMG) commented: “After evaluating the currently commercially available MALDI TOF based microorganisms identification systems, it was clear to us that the MALDI Biotyper will improve and support our microbiology work due to its performance in identifying difficult bacteria, yeasts and fungi samples.
Bruker has a long term record in continuously pushing mass spectrometry based applications for microbiology beyond current opportunities and borders. Therefore, we are
confident to realize our own research ideas for innovative fungi applications.
Deciding to go with Bruker’s high-end autoflex TOF/TOF instrument in additional allows us to identify new proteins as part of complex microorganisms’ cell walls and their biological functions in respective molecular processes.
We will also work on a better understanding of some resistance mechanisms of yeasts and fungi, which are not yet fully understood. In addition, we plan to evaluate how to combine Bruker’s standardized fungi workflow with current EUCAST recommendations for standardized fungi antibiogram generation.”
Dr. Guido Mix, Sales Director for Microbiology at Bruker, commented: “The collaboration with the Institute of Medical Microbiology is an important milestone validating our efforts to develop user-friendly and reproducible workflows even for yeasts and fungi, and we look forward to advancing this field even further with UMG.
More than 30 peer reviewed studies on the MALDI Biotyper have proven the superior analytical performance compared to classical identification methods for the well known standard germs representing roughly 95% of the isolates in most microbiology labs. Now the MALDI Biotyper can also provide for reliable identification of these last 5%, including for example multicellular fungi.”
Source: Bruker Daltonics