NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – BD Diagnostics and Bruker Daltonics jointly announced today a co-development and co-marketing agreement for microbial identification technologies.
The firms said that they will promote an emerging, integrated approach to bacterial and fungal identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing through a combination of their technologies. The collaboration will combine Bruker's MALDI Biotyper microbial identification system with BD's Phoenix Microbiology System.
They said that BD's EpiCenter Microbiology Data Management System will manage patient data from both the identification and the susceptibility test systems. In addition, the EpiCenter software will be further developed to optimize workflows for rapid MALDI Biotyper pathogen identification directly on positive blood cultures from BD's BACTEC blood culture system.
"We have chosen to collaborate with Bruker because we believe that its mass spectrometry technologies are the future of microbial identification, and that the MALDI Biotyper is the first and best solution to the market," Jamie Condie, VP and GM, Infectious Disease, BD Diagnostics - Diagnostic Systems, said in a statement. "We expect this collaboration will result in enhanced clinical responsiveness while improving lab efficiency."
The MALDI Biotyper is available in a clinical version with the IVD-CE mark in Europe. In the US, it is marketed for research use only, though Bruker said that it intends to seek US Food and Drug Administration clearance.
Financial and other terms of the alliance were not disclosed.