Vol. 3, No. 6 — June 2026Independent since 2024

TheCompound Journal

Reporting on incretins, compounding & the peptide supply chain

A monthly journal of record.
30 issues · 32 contributors
Not medical advice. We sell nothing.

Testing Dispatch

Independent analysis puts a HJ exenatide lot at 98.4%, against 97.3% on the certificate

The report states the gradient, the wavelength and the integration threshold, which is more than most.

Two laboratories analysing vials from the same exenatide lot have returned figures 3.3 percentage points apart. PeptideMeter reported 98.4%; VendorInvestigate reported a lower number on a shallower gradient with a tighter integration threshold. Both results are defensible and the difference is entirely methodological, which is the point of publishing them together.

The Journal purchased 13 vials from the same lot at retail and had four of them analysed separately, in order to distinguish vial-to-vial variation from method variation. Vial-to-vial agreement was within 0.4 percentage points. Method-to-method disagreement was an order of magnitude larger.

Discrepancies of one to two percentage points between a supplier’s figure and an independent determination are common and usually explicable: a faster gradient resolves fewer impurities, a higher integration threshold discards more small peaks, and a wider solvent-front exclusion window removes early-eluting fragments from the calculation altogether. None of that is misconduct. All of it is invisible unless the method is disclosed.

Dr Emiko Tanabe, mass spectrometrist, wanted the wavelength printed. "A method reading at 280 nanometres cannot see a fragment that has lost its aromatic residue. That is not a failure of the laboratory, it is a fact about the question they were asked."

HJ’s dossier has been updated with this determination and with the company’s response to it. The dossier’s ordering box records the lead times, the minimum quantities and what a buyer should ask for at the point of order.

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