Next Generation MALDI-TOF MS platform for instant diagnosis of infection

MALDI-TOF MS (Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionisation Time Of Flight Mass Spectrometry) is a technology, which is successfully used for the identification of infectious microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. First proposed over thirty years ago, M ALDI-TOF-MS has rapidly emerged in the last decades as a standard diagnostic technology used in most clinical microbiology laboratories. The reason for its success is that MALDI-TOF-MS - compared to conventional technologies used at the time - reduced the time needed for identification of clinical isolates obtained after culture from 10 hours to 10 minutes. In addition, identification accuracy of MALDI-TOF-MS proved superior to conventional methods, when compared with a gold standard method. As time to di agnosis and accuracy are two crucial elements in clinical management of microbial infections, the use of MALDI-TOF MS technology enabled significant improvements in the clinical care of patients. Combined with its relative ease of use and little infrastru ctural requirements it has led to one of the most rapid and successful transformations in the clinical microbiology laboratory work processes in the last decades. Current MALDI-TOF-MS does however have several shortcomings that prevent it from "ticking a ll the boxes" necessary for becoming the diagnostic technology of choice for clinical microbiology laboratories. Building on this successful MALDI-TOF-MS technology NeGeMa has set out to develop a new diagnostic platform that has the potential to have t he same revolutionizing impact on clinical diagnoses. NeGeMa has set out to develop a Next Generation MALDI-TOF MS platform technology that circumvents its shortcomings. The NeGeMa platform will not require culture, reducing the time to diagnosis from hou rs or days to minutes and enabling near-to-bedside application of the technology.