Independent analysis puts a HJ orforglipron lot at 95.8%, against 93.6% on the certificate

An independent purity determination on orforglipron material sold by HJ has returned 95.8%, a figure 3.1 percentage points above the number printed on the accompanying certificate, which the supplier had reported against a shorter gradient and a tighter threshold. The analysis was performed by Janoshik on a vial the Journal bought as an ordinary retail customer in May 2024 and posted unopened.

The Journal purchased 9 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.

Dr Beatriz Sarmiento, clinical pharmacologist, Universidad de Navarra, 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.