Bruker Microbiology & Infection Diagnostics develop and produce systems and assays for the microbial analysis of bacteria, fungi and yeasts, as well as for the detection of antibiotic resistances. Our portfolio of molecular diagnostics complements the offering by a broad range of PCR tests for the detection of respiratory disease, mycobacteria (incl. tuberculosis), STI, infections of the immunocompromised host and other infectious diseases.
Fast, easy and reliable microbial identification
More than a decade ago, Bruker changed microbiology by developing the market leading MALDI Biotyper® for fast and easy microbial identification to species level, starting from culture. On a global scale, the installed base of MALDI Biotyper systems delivers an amazing number of approximately 185 million microbial identifications per year (status 2022). Each of those systems is in heavy daily use to help saving countless lives, each and every year. Meanwhile, the 4th generation of its kind, the MALDI Biotyper® sirius System, holds additionally a negative ion mode allowing for rapid detection of colistin resistance, based on lipid analysis. Further innovations include the MBT Sepsityper® solution for direct identification from positive blood culture, and resistance testing assays.
Real-time epidemiology
The complementary IR Biotyper®, based on FT-IR spectroscopy, allows fast and easy strain typing targeting hospital hygiene and epidemiology. The IR Biotyper drives the analysis from microbial species one step further towards strains and subspecies. Unlike existing molecular technologies, which are expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome, the IR Biotyper provides results the same day. This helps in identifying hygiene-related outbreaks on hospital wards. Our customers call this real-time surveillance, in contrast to molecular strain typing which takes days and quite often only provides results for the files. Our IR Biotyper can help the healthcare community to prevent hospital-acquired infections with microbes that are quite often resistant to multiple antibiotics, and which can thus be very difficult to fight.
Antimicrobial resistance
To detect such critical resistances, Bruker’s MICRONAUT range of broth microdilution (BMD) products offers accurate, complete, and true MIC determination of microorganisms as well as detection of important resistance mechanisms. In 2022, UMIC® became Bruker’s brand for high accuracy single drug MIC testing, including the recently launched UMIC® Cefiderocol.
Molecular diagnostics pioneering multiplex technology
Bruker’s latest Molecular Diagnostics offering includes the FluoroType® system, with an integrated workflow from sample to result, and recent assays powered by LiquidArray® technology for next generation multiplexing.
Our molecular diagnostics assays are currently focused on three major topics, being tuberculosis & mycobacteria, syndromic LiquidArray® panels and HIV viral load & viral hepatitis. For TB/mycobacteria we offer a leading and differentiated product portfolio of ruggedized line-probe assays, which can even be broadly used in countries with limited infrastructure. Additionally, we offer modern fluorescence-based real-time PCR assays for culture-free, fast, same-day detection.
Our new LiquidArray technology represents a proprietary, specific PCR approach that allows to detect many viruses, bacteria, yeast, fungi and even parasites, that could potentially cause a certain clinical syndrome, like gastrointestinal disease, in one run. This novel method for microbiological detection uses innovative probe and thermocycling technologies, in conjunction with at-a-glance software read-outs, to realize the full potential of the multiplexing capability of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). LiquidArray brings next generation multiplexing to the routine clinical microbiology laboratory for infectious disease diagnostics in the areas of mycobacteria differentiation and resistance detection, and syndromic panels for gastrointestinal and sexually transmitted infections.
