New Bacteria Strains

We have an active programme to acquire new strains for our catalogue. On this page we list recent additions.

New Antimicrobial Resistant Strains

The role of the Antibiotic Resistance Monitoring & Reference Laboratory (ARMRL), based at HPA Colindale, is investigating unusual antibiotic resistance. For several years they have paid special attention to carbapenems. Resistance to carbapenems is particularly important because, very often, carbapenems are the last useful antibiotics against otherwise multi-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, predominantly hospital bacteria like Escherichia coli but, especially, Klebsiella. Until recently, resistant Enterobacteriaceae that produced carbapenemases (enzymes actually able to destroy carbapenems) were very rare, fewer than five referrals per year to ARMRL up to 2007, then 22 in 2008, 73 in 2009 and 114 so far in 2010. From late 2008 onwards these totals increasingly were a newly discovered carbapenem-destroying enzyme called NDM-1. A reference culture with NDM-1 metallo-beta-lactamase is now available from NCTC as NCTC 13443 = H0 9030 0671 Klebsiella pneumoniae, as are a range of other reference strains with various antimicrobial resistance mechanisms. See below for some recent additions to the collection.