Bruker has introduced important new clinical microbiology assays and consumables kits to further enhance the MALDI Biotyper (MBT) platform.
With its new MBT STAR-Carba IVD kit, Bruker expands the MALDI Biotyper workflow beyond accurate and very broad microbial identification to additional fast functional testing of resistance against selected antibiotics of high clinical relevance.
The MBT STAR-Carba IVD kit is said to be the first validated diagnostic assay for mass spectrometry-based resistance testing on the market. It offers rapid turnaround time, and also gives information on the resistance mechanism. Independent of the resistance gene(s) involved, this novel assay detects the bacterial antibiotic resistance mechanism, e.g. the degradation of carbapenems, from isolates or from positive blood cultures.
Specifically, the MBT STAR-Carba IVD assay is testing against carbapenem-resistance in Gram-negative bacteria, thus addressing a currently urgent healthcare problem.
The MBT STAR-Carba IVD Kit and Software Module for the automated data interpretation are labeled according to EU directive EC/98/79.
Bruker is planning to further expand the portfolio of MBT STAR assays in the future for the detection of additional resistance mechanisms.
Professor Sören Schubert from the Max-von-Pettenkofer Institute at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany said: “I am impressed by the continuous innovations that Bruker offers on the MALDI Biotyper platform. The new diagnostic MBT STAR-Carba IVD assay is of significant clinical relevance, because carbapenemase producing bacteria are a growing healthcare concern and rapid, functional analysis is very important. This novel assay for rapid resistance testing for selected antibiotics can be run on the same MALDI Biotyper platform which has been successfully used for identification of bacteria and fungi in the microbiological lab. This is yet another milestone for the broad introduction of MALDI-TOF technology into clinical routine microbiology."
