Independent analysis puts a QYB dulaglutide lot at 99.3%, against 98.0% on the certificate

Two laboratories analysing vials from the same dulaglutide lot have returned figures 2.3 percentage points apart. VendorInvestigate reported 99.3%; Janoshik 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 17 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.

Purity became this trade’s single figure of merit because it is the cheapest measurement to obtain and the easiest to compare. Peptide content, which determines how much drug is actually in a vial, costs several times as much and is quoted as a priced addition by most of the twenty companies in the Journal’s dossier programme rather than carried as a standard release test. Sterility and endotoxin are separate disciplines again, and are neither tested nor claimed.

"Ask for the suitability summary before you argue about the percentage," said Dr Beatriz Sarmiento, clinical pharmacologist, Universidad de Navarra. "If the tailing factor and the replicate precision are outside limits, you are arguing about arithmetic performed on an unfit separation."

QYB’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.