VendorInvestigate result on a Zhuhai survodutide lot lands 4.2 points below the supplier’s figure

A peptide content determination commissioned by the Journal on a 5 mg survodutide vial from ERP has returned 94% of the labelled mass. Chromatographic purity on the same vial was above 96.1%. The two numbers measure different things and only one of them was on the certificate.

Content by elemental nitrogen determination returned 94% of the labelled nominal mass, which on a 5 mg vial corresponds to roughly 10.40 mg of peptide rather than the labelled figure. The remainder is accounted for by counter-ion, residual water and residual solvent, none of which is visible chromatographically.

The Journal purchased 300 vials from the same lot and had 4 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 not offered as a standard release test by any of the twenty companies in the Journal’s dossier programme. Sterility and endotoxin are separate disciplines again, and are neither tested nor claimed.

Sinéad Corrigan, patient advocate and former trial participant, was more cautious. "One lot tells you about one lot. I would not draw a conclusion about a company from a single determination, and I would not let a company draw one either."

ERP’s dossier has been updated with this determination and with the date of the request for comment. The dossier’s "what we could not verify" box records the questions still outstanding.