SarahChen_PharmD said:The provenance questions are more useful than the numbers.
I am more sceptical of certificates as a category than this thread is. The document tells you about a sample somebody chose to send, at a moment in time, and nothing about the vial in your hand. Independent purchase-and-test is a different quality of evidence and everything else is inference.
NauseaFreeNow said:I have a certificate reporting 99.2% purity and 6.1mg content on a vial sold as 5mg, and I cannot work out whether those two numbers are consistent or…
Third-party testing services for certificates of analysis besides Janoshik:
- Janoshik: Gold standard for peptide community, ~$129, 10-14 day turnaround
- Valitech: US-based, ISO 17025 accredited, ~$219
- Eurofins: Full pharmaceutical testing suite, more expensive but comprehensive
- ChemTox: Basic identity and purity testing, ~$129
Janoshik is the community standard but any ISO-accredited analytical lab can verify peptide identity and purity. The key is independence — don't rely solely on the vendor's own testing.
anders_CPH said:I am more sceptical of certificates as a category than this thread is.
Mass spectrometry confirmation for certificates of analysis: beyond HPLC purity, mass spec tells you the molecule's exact molecular weight. This confirms identity — not just purity.
Why this matters: HPLC can show you a "pure" compound, but if it's pure of the WRONG compound, purity is meaningless. Mass spec at m/z 4113.58 Da confirms it's actually semaglutide. My Janoshik report includes both HPLC and mass spec.
If your testing provider only offers HPLC, consider upgrading to include mass spec for at least your first batch from a new vendor.
Sigma-Aldrich — Research-Grade Standards
Certified reference materials, analytical reagents, and research-grade standards for peptide verification. Trusted by laboratories worldwide.
Shop Reference StandardsFollowing on from quinn_sf — and this may be the naive question:
Whether a purity figure and a content figure can disagree without one of them being wrong?
Reporting back.
Purity and content being different measurements was the piece I was missing. The vial was overfilled and pure, which is a very different problem from the one I thought I had.