Pathogen Bank

The Pathogen Bank collects and stores clinically relevant pathogens for use in research, product development and for laboratory validation, training and quality assurance.

It is based at the QMC and was originally developed by our Clinical Microbiology specialists working with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to support clinical research.

Our services

• Isolates directly from the Pathogen Bank
• Prospective collection of isolates not in the Pathogen Bank
• Disc diffusion (EUCAST) antibiotic susceptibility testing
• E-Test antibiotic susceptibility testing
• Microbroth dilution antibiotic susceptibility testing
• MALDI-TOF Identification of isolates provided to us (not for retention in the Pathogen Bank)

The Bank currently has ~3.5K isolates of 94 different bacteria and yeast genera isolated from a number of different diagnostic specimens including urine, stool, sputum, blood cultures and puss. Our currently available pathogens are:

PDF of Genus for Website.pdf [pdf] 93KB

Research

Isolates from pathogen bank have been used by university researchers for multiple independent and collaborative research projects.

Product development

The Pathogen Bank has been utilised to generate data to gain CE-IVD accreditation for a number of diagnostic products to date.

Validation 

Locally strains have been used in the validation and verification process for the introduction of new diagnostic assays and the training of biomedical scientists and clinical registrars.

Quality control

Quality assurance of strains is maintained using a number of systems:

• temperature monitoring by Comark
• dual storage: each organism stored has two vials, one for use and one as a reserve, separately maintained
• random testing for viability.

All of our strains are stored on Microbank™ beads (Pro-Lab Diagnsoitics) and stored at -70°C for long term storage.