Impact of MALDI-TOF MS in clinical mycology: progress and barriers in diagnostics

Abstract

[Excerpt] The science of microbial identification can be considered to have arisen from the seminal work of the Dutch microbiologist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. He provided the pioneering microscopic work in 1683 using rudimentary equipment to support the studies of the equally important French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who described the biological functions of microbes. In Germany, Robert Koch demonstrated the aetiology of the infectious disease process in humans. The search for the accurate identification of microbial pathogens became crucial for underpinning medicine in treating diseases. Florentine Pier Antonio Micheli published the Nova Plantarum Genera in 1729, which is an illustrated work detailing approximately 1900 ‘plant’ species. Of these, about 900 were fungi and lichenized fungi. In fact, Micheli specialized in microfungi and is notable for having defined several important genera including Aspergillus. Even now, classical mycological identifications are performed by some of those classical methods based on micro‐ and macromorphology (Simões et al., 2013). [...]