print header

Email a friend Bookmark Print this page Help

Science Programmes

MALDI-TOF future direction

Modern Approaches

Medical Microbiology

Markus Kostrzewa, Bruker Daltonik GmbH, Bremen, Germany

Recently, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry fingerprinting for microbial identification appeared as a powerful alternative to biochemical methods, in particular for clinical microbiology routine laboratories.

The technology has been established in an increasing number of laboratories in Europe during the last years and is also being introduced in the United States, recently. Improved accuracy, reduced costs, and significantly shortened time-to-result could be demonstrated in various studies, for particular groups of microorganisms as well as for general clinical routine practice. After implementation for straight-forward identification of bacteria and yeasts from agar plates, new areas are currently investigated where the technology could improve and speed up diagnostic in clinical microbiology.

Protocols and databases for particularly difficult to identify microorganisms, i.e. mycobacteria and multicellular fungi, are being developed. First very promising results were obtained using dedicated protocols to identify microorganisms directly from urine, from Salmonella enrichment in selective broth, and from positive blood cultures, without a further cultivation step on an agar plate.

Also investigation of capabilities to discriminate bacteria on the subspecies level using strain-specific signals are very encouraging and may lead to novel applications of the technology for subtyping, virulence-prediction, or in epidemiology. Further, resistance detection, at least for particular classes of antibiotics and bacteria seems to be possible by functional assays as shown for beta-lactamase activity or by detection of specific MS profiles.

Taken together, these novel applications are indicating the extension of MALDI-TOF MS in clinical microbiology to a platform for an expanding set of diagnostic tests. The talk will give an overview about such new approaches and their future perspectives.