At the 25th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), Bruker announced the introduction of the MALDI Biotyper^smart (MBT^smart ), a new high-throughput option in the MALDI Biotyper product family of bench-top MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry systems for microbiology laboratories. The MBT^smart is IVD-CE labeled according to EU directive EC/98/79, and fully integrated with the new IVD MALDI Sepsityper workflow for rapid microbial identification from positive blood cultures.

The new MALDI Biotyper^smart is equipped with Bruker’s proprietary smartbeam^TM solid-state laser, which increases the laser lifetime by an order of magnitude. In practice, this makes the smartbeam laser essentially a ‘lifetime’ laser for most microbiology applications and typical sample throughputs today. Smartbeam is a Bruker-proprietary laser technology which combines the higher speed and lifetime of a solid-state laser with the analytical MALDI performance of a nitrogen laser.

The MALDI Biotyper^smart also features a more than three times higher laser repetition rate for even faster Time-to-Result (TTR), which often is crucial in clinical microbiology. It also enables higher throughput during peak demand times in the clinical microbiology laboratory, e.g. in the mornings.

The higher speed and lifetime make the new MBT^smart more future-proof by providing the higher throughput that will be beneficial to implement additional workflows going forward. For example, it facilitates additional research applications, like sub-typing, or the emerging family of Bruker-proprietary Selective Testing of Antibiotic Resistance (MBT-STAR) assays, which use the MALDI Biotyper platform for functional resistance testing of bacteria, initially for beta-lactamase activity. High quality subtyping or MBT-STAR assays, with QC comparisons, are expected to require approximately an order of magnitude more laser shots than identification.

The MALDI Biotyper^smart is also equipped with a higher performance vacuum system. This enables flexible and convenient workflows in laboratories where multiple users are working on the same instrument, and have the need to exchange MALDI target plates with a minimum delay. The modified design allows reaching high vacuum faster after preventive maintenance or service, thus even further increasing instrument availability.

Dr. Edwin Boel, Consultant Microbiologist at University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands, explained: “We have been using the MALDI Biotyper system for microbial identification in our routine laboratory for years. But we also envision additional workflows like direct analysis from positive blood cultures, and MALDI Biotyper-based selective testing of antibiotic resistance. Even nucleic acid analysis on MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry might become of interest for the microbiology laboratory in the future. In summary, we are convinced that MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry will have even broader impact on microbiology laboratories in the future. The new MBT^smart provides the hardware improvements to be future-proof for such new workflows.”

Dr. Wolfgang Pusch, Executive Vice President for Clinical MALDI at Bruker Daltonics, added: “Bruker is dedicated to innovation and workflow improvements in clinical microbiology, in order to provide more and better information with dramatically shorter TTRs and higher throughput to infectious disease clinicians. This enables our customers to reduce healthcare costs, improve antibiotic stewardship, and improve patient comfort and outcomes. Since the introduction of the MALDI Biotyper, Bruker has led the MALDI-revolution in microbial identification. With the introduction of the MALDI Biotyper^smart, Bruker is now taking MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to the next level in the microbiology laboratory. The MALDI Biotyper^smart system is a new high-end option for those customers who seek further increases in throughput, convenience and flexibility in the laboratory. Higher throughput, speed and laser lifetime facilitate additional workflows for developing the MBT platform more and more into a general microbiology workhorse for multiple diagnostic and analytical tasks.”