Independent analysis puts a SGN liraglutide lot at 95.7%, against 93.4% on the certificate

A peptide content determination commissioned by the Journal on a 5 mg liraglutide vial from SGN has returned 97% of the labelled mass. Chromatographic purity on the same vial was above 95.7%. The two numbers measure different things and only one of them was on the certificate.

Content by elemental nitrogen determination returned 97% of the labelled nominal mass, which on a 5 mg vial corresponds to roughly 6.35 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 1300 vials from the same lot and had 16 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.

"The figure is not wrong and neither is theirs," said Havel Novotný, independent laboratory quality manager. "They are answers to two different questions and the trade has decided to pretend there is only one question. Print the gradient and the argument disappears."

SGN’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.