Dynacare Laboratories has acquired a Bruker Maldi Biotyper system for use in microbial studies. According to the company, the system is also under consideration to replace 16s rDNA sequencing for identification.
“Maldi-TOF is going to revolutionize identification in clinical microbiology,” says Nathan Ledeboer, M.D., medical director of microbiology and molecular diagnostics for Dynacare. “It will reduce the turnaround of clinical cultures, decrease laboratory errors, and reduce laboratory costs. We plan to use the Maldi Biotyper for microbial identifications currently performed by phenotypic methods and expect to see improvements in time to result, workflow, and consumables costs.”
The Maldi Biotyper is a mass spectrometry-based platform designed for molecular identification of bacteria, yeast, and fungi. It includes a database consisting of quality controlled entries of over 3,900 strains from 2,000 microbial species.
Starting from a cultured colony, the system matches the measured protein fingerprint against the Maldi Biotyper database. A scored list of identification proposals is then presented to the researcher within minutes.
Bruker says that it has installed over 200 Maldi Biotyper systems worldwide in research and clinical laboratories. In May 2009, the system obtained an IVD-CE mark, and Bruker plans on submitting the Maldi Biotyper to the FDA for clearance.