The University of Maryland Schools of Pharmacy and Dentistry received a $1.1 million grant from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Services (NIGMS) www.nigms.nih.gov to create a bacterial library using mass spectrometry technology to enable physicians to quickly and accurately identify a patient’s infection that will lead to more accurate and quicker treatments.
David Goodlett, PhD Chair of Pharmaceutical Sciences www.pharmacy.umaryland.edu and Director of the Mass Spectrometry Center www.pharmacy.umaryland.edu/centers/massspec/ reports, “So often we hear about patients who were given antibiotics for an infection that wasn’t properly diagnosed because of limitations with the diagnostic process.
Antibiotics can be damaging to the kidneys and the bone and can lead to issues with antibiotic resistance, we want to improve upon existing diagnostic tests to improve treatments.”
The current methods for diagnosing bacterial infections approved by FDA include biological culture, nucleic acid amplification, ribosomal protein sequence characterization, and genome sequencing.
According to Robert Ernst PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at the School of Dentistry www.dental.maryland.edu, “Collectively these methods are slow, require amplification of clinically-obtained material, and are often significantly expensive and burdensome for diagnostic laboratory staff.”
In order to improve the rapid and accurate diagnosis of bacterial infections, the researchers will use a mass spectrometry technique called Matrix-Assisted Laser Desoption Ionization or MALDI.
The researchers will develop, refine, and use ultra-small scale purification methodologies to extract lipids from positive and negative bacteria as well as fungi. This will result in essential bacterial and fungal lipids creating a chemical barcode to be used to identify pathogens by mass spectrometry profiling.
To further develop this novel-point-of-care pathogen identification product technology into commercially available products that will benefit patients, Goodlett and Ernst are working with the University of Maryland’s Office of Technology Transfer www.umventures.org. They are trying to identify companies interested in developing the software for the project and assist with the development of assays to detect the bacteria.