BAMS7 Jul 2020 20:27
I thought that I would look further into what MS’s the hospitals had in their labs. Searches indicated that some trusts did have Maldi ToF’s which they were using for microbial ID’s. The market is dominated almost entirely by one manufacture, Bruker, as this has the best database for identifying the pathogens. I then asked around my contacts for some information about these specific MS’s (it is not a company I have had contact with). The person I talked to originally was from a company that does not supply the basic Maldi ToF’s being used for microbial ID’s, their instruments are more frequently used for small molecule work which, it seems, is often in a different lab and hence was less aware of the installed numbers of ToF’s. I was then given some information, 2nd hand, from an engineer who used to work for Bruker’s and now works for an independent service company.
So, Maldi ToF’s are more common than I was originally told, (apologies RK) although certainly not to the extent of one in every hospital. They generally have them in the pathology labs of a larger Trust cluster. They often actually have two (one as a backup), however the instruments are evidently already at near capacity. They are quite basic and usually set up specifically for Biotyping pathogens .
How easy it would be to do Sars cov2 ? Much will depend on the assay they produce, there are multiple possible routes – whole proteins, on bead tryptic digests etc, the cruder the sample going in, the easier it will be, but this then comes with its own set of problems. If you look at the Adeptrix webpages you can see that they have further automation that they use for sample prep. Once there are more details of the assay, the clearer it will become as to how easy it is to run on the installed instruments.
The main positive is that if you have one instrument then it means you are more likely to have the infrastructure and technical support to expand the instrument number or add further automation if needed. Not having one in the first place it is a much larger barrier. It is also good that they are mainly used in pathology labs -which are used to working with pathogens (rather than, say, a lab measuring hormones), so measuring Sar cov2 is not a big leap (although they are not running BAMS type workflow for the ID’s).
In case anyone thinks that I was deramping and now ramping for nefarious purposes ! then somewhat fortuitously a company used FOI’s to the hospital trusts last September/October asking what MS facilities they have. Do a google search for FOI /NHS/ Mass Spec – a random selection is listed below. As a rule, small molecule work- hormones etc will be on a triple quad and microbial ID on a Maldi ToF (so appropriate for BAMS). As I said previously the most common are facilities for small molecule analysis.
I still stick by my original view that it is not a block buster like the LFT but there is the potential for it to be used more in hospitals than I initially thought.
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