HPLC / HPLC-MS

Anyone who buys or sells a peptide product mainly wants two questions answered: is what is on the label actually in the product? And how pure is it? For exactly these questions, two methods are used in the lab.

The first is HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography). It sorts the components of a sample - similar to a fine sieve or a race, where different particles move at different speeds. This way, it separates the individual components and makes their proportions measurable, yielding the purity (e.g. „98%").

With mass spectrometry (MS)

The second method is mass spectrometry (MS) - a technique that weighs individual molecules to identify them. When HPLC is coupled with MS (HPLC-MS), it also determines identity: does the molecular weight (simplified: the „weight" of a single molecule, derived from the MS reading) match the expected peptide (the desired chain of amino acids)? Only this combination answers the key questions: is it the right thing - and how pure is it?

Relation to the CoA

For you as a buyer, this means: a solid Certificate of Analysis (CoA), based on exactly these HPLC-MS measurements, is your proof that the product really contains what is stated on the label - and that the quality is right.