Three German laboratories utilize Bruker’s molecular identification solution

At the 61^st Annual Meeting of the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology on September 20-23, 2009 in Goettingen, Bruker Daltonics announces that three major German private clinical microbiology laboratories have extended their accreditation according to DIN EN ISO 15189 to include the use of Bruker’s MALDI Biotyper molecular identification solution.

The DIN EN ISO 15189 norm defines the quality management, includes corrective actions, documentation, internal audits, qualification of staff, pre-analytical measures and ensures the quality of the analytical techniques that are used in today’s modern laboratories. The existing laboratory accreditations have been extended to include the MALDI Biotyper at Labor Boogen (Cologne), MVZ für Mikrobiologie, Labordiagnostik und Hygiene (Dessau) and MVZ Labor Prof. Seelig (Karlsruhe).

This DIN EN ISO 15189 accreditation is certified by the Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle Chemie (DACH) GmbH, an agency in charge of accreditations and surveillance of laboratories working in the fields of chemistry, biology and medicine. The extended accreditation demonstrates the expertise and professional competence of the respective laboratories to utilize the MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for their microbial identification workflow.

Dr. Ulrich Weller, Head of Microbiology at Labor Boogen (Cologne) said: “Our laboratory has been one of the pioneers in using the MALDI Biotyper for fast microbial identification based on molecular protein fingerprinting. With the current accreditation we have now also official approval of the identification quality based on this exciting technology.”

Dr. Juliane Böttcher-Lorenz, Head of MVZ für Mikrobiologie, Labordiagnostik und Hygiene Dessau GmbH, further commented: “We are pleased to see that the MALDI Biotyper which was an exciting but untypical technology two years ago is now becoming mainstream and this is also reflected in the growing number of routine laboratories which received accreditation for the MALDI Biotyper.”

Dr. Andrea Koch, Head of Microbiology at Labor Prof. Seelig (Karlsruhe) concluded: “We are using the MALDI Biotyper since more than a year for our complete microbial identification work. For this reason it was only consequent to include this technology in our set of accredited technologies.”