Inexpensive Diagnostic Tool Enables Rapid Microbial Identification for Positive Blood Cultures

A newly commercialized rapid microbial identification system fully automates the sample preparation steps for reporting phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility results in approximately seven hours direct from positive blood cultures, thereby reducing the time clinicians must wait to determine the most optimal antibiotic therapy for deadly infections.

Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc. (Tucson, AZ, USA) has announced the commercialization of Accelerate Arc system, which includes its new Accelerate Arc Module and blood culture (BC) kit, having completed IVD registration with the FDA. The Accelerate Arc system unlocks the path to automated, rapid microbial ID for positive blood cultures across the large installed base of MALDI system users. It can cut hours of wait time, eliminate laborious hands-on sample prep, and offer significant cost savings for healthcare facilities compared to current methods. Designed or labs with MALDI platforms, the Accelerate Arc Module and BC kit is a novel application of inline centrifugation and automated sample prep techniques, which together with the BC kit, provides a suspension of cleaned microbial cells for direct transfer to a MALDI spotting plate.

The simple load-and-go workflow eliminates the need for batching multiple specimen tests, cutting hours off the wait for microbial ID results for positive blood cultures. The Accelerate Arc Module requires just 2-3 minutes of hands-on time to run and is simple enough to be used on all shifts, by any laboratory technician, freeing up valuable technician time by automating the MALDI workflow. Further, this automated, rapid workflow that the Accelerate Arc system avails is the perfect companion to the Accelerate PhenoTest BC kit AST configuration enabling laboratories to report identification and antimicrobial susceptibility test results directly from positive blood cultures days earlier than current standard-of-care methods.

"Arc in its early days of commercialization has already generated numerous evaluations and in-bound interest from potential commercial partners. Using our system, the total cost to rapidly identify organisms from positive blood cultures is significantly less than what laboratories are paying today for a rapid molecular ID solution," said John Meduri, Chief Strategy Officer for Accelerate Diagnostics.

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Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc.