Firms’ technologies will be coupled and optimized for pathogen identification.

BD Diagnostics and Bruker Daltonics are teaming up to provide an integrated approach to bacterial and fungal identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The companies are combining the BD Phoenix™ system, the Bruker MALDI Biotyper, and BD’s data-management EpiCenter system with the aim of reducing the turnaround time for diagnostic results and improving laboratory efficiency and costs.

The Bruker MALDI Biotyper allows accurate, rapid, and cost-effective microbial identification through a process in which organisms are identified by the unique spectrum of the major proteins and peptides that constitute their makeup, Bruker explains. It is available in a clinical version with IVD-CE mark in Europe and is for research use only (RUO) in the U.S., where Bruker intends to seek FDA clearance.

Under the firms’ international co-development and co-marketing collaboration, BD and Bruker intend to combine the MALDI Biotyper microbial ID system with automated antimicrobial susceptibility testing on the BD Phoenix™ microbiology system. The BD EpiCenter™ microbiology data-management system, which will manage patient data from both the identification and the susceptibility test systems, will facilitate this integrated approach.

The MALDI Biotyper–BD EpiCenter software integration will be further developed to optimize workflows for rapid MALDI Biotyper pathogen identification directly on positive blood cultures from the leading BD Bactec™ blood culture system. This rapid blood culture-to-ID workflow is supported by Bruker’s new MALDI Sepsityper™ consumables kit, which is currently for RUO.

“We have chosen to collaborate with Bruker because we believe that its mass spectrometry technologies are the future of microbial identification and that the MALDI Biotyper is the first and best solution to the market,” comments Jamie Condie, vp and GM, infectious disease, BD Diagnostics–Diagnostic Systems. “We expect this collaboration will result in enhanced clinical responsiveness while improving lab efficiency.”

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