Dr.NateNeph said:They are not contradictory, they measure different things, and this is the single most common misreading of a certificate.
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.
Dr.CardioMD said:Two reports on the same product from two laboratories, four percentage points apart, and no method stated on either.
HPLC results interpretation for certificates of analysis: when you get your Janoshik report back, here's what the numbers mean:
- Purity %: Should be >97%. Below 95% is concerning.
- Retention time: Should match reference standard for the peptide
- Related substances: Degradation products should be <2% total
- Single impurity: No individual impurity should exceed 1%
My last batch: 99.4% purity, 0.2% total related substances. Clean chromatogram with single sharp peak at expected retention time. Exactly what you want to see.
TrialNerd_Beth said:I am more sceptical of certificates as a category than this thread is.
Third-party testing services for certificates of analysis besides Janoshik:
- Janoshik: Gold standard for peptide community, ~$127, 10-14 day turnaround
- Valitech: US-based, ISO 17025 accredited, ~$217
- Eurofins: Full pharmaceutical testing suite, more expensive but comprehensive
- ChemTox: Basic identity and purity testing, ~$107
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.
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 JennaRN — and this may be the naive question:
Whether a purity figure and a content figure can disagree without one of them being wrong?
OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.
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.