Questions we get asked, answered plainly

Panels and pricing

What each panel covers, what it costs, and which one you actually need.

How much does peptide testing cost at Axiom?

Axiom 4X Essential is $195 per vial and Axiom 8X Comprehensive is $595 per vial. Extra same-lot vials for cross-vial consistency are $195 each. Bacterial endotoxin under USP 85 is a $50 module on the 4X panel, and CHNS net peptide content is $145. Every price is published on the pricing page; there is no quote-to-find-out step.

What is the difference between the 4X and 8X panels?

4X answers four questions: Molecular Mass Fingerprinting, Homogeneity Profiling, Net Peptide Mass Quantitation, Sterility Screen. 8X answers those four and adds Bacterial Endotoxin, Elemental Catalytic Sweep, Post-Reconstitution Stability, Fentanyl & Analog Screen. The layer sets are the difference. Nothing about the four shared questions is run differently or better on the more expensive panel.

Do I need the 8X panel?

Usually not, and we would rather say so. A vial that is the wrong molecule, impure, under-dosed or microbially contaminated fails at the four essentials, and the extra four layers rarely change that verdict. 8X is worth buying when you are vetting a brand new source, when the product is going into an injectable format and you want endotoxin and elemental data on the same certificate, or when you simply want the depth. It is not a safety requirement and we do not present it as one.

Is a more expensive panel a more accurate test?

No. Price tracks how many questions get answered, not how carefully any one of them is answered. The identity determination on a 4X certificate is the same LC-MS/MS determination, run the same way, as the one on an 8X certificate.

How many vials do I need to send?

One vial is enough for a panel. Send more if you want a lot-level answer rather than a vial-level one: extra same-lot vials are $195 each, and a multi-vial submission is scored as a consistency test, with the lot mean required to be on target and the vial-to-vial coefficient of variation required to be within 5% by default. A single-vial result is a statement about that vial, which is a narrower claim than most people read it as.

Can you test a blend with more than one active?

Yes, and the certificate resolves each declared component separately. Identity passes only if every declared component has a real theoretical mass and a real observed mass within tolerance. A blend that confirms on one component has not been identified, and our release gate refuses to sign one that did.

Do you test bacteriostatic water or reconstitution solvents?

We do not publish a bacteriostatic water panel, so we are not going to imply one exists. If that is what you need, ask us before you ship and we will tell you plainly whether we can run it or point you elsewhere.

Turnaround and logistics

How long it takes, from when, and what happens to your vial.

How long does testing take?

4-7 business days for the 4X panel and 7-10 business days for the 8X panel. Rush targets are 48-hour for 4X and 4-6 business days for 8X. These are targets we set, not guarantees, and we would rather publish an honest range than a number we beat only sometimes.

Is turnaround measured from when I place the order?

No, it is measured from when the vial arrives at the lab. Inbound shipping is under your control and outside ours, so counting it would let a slow courier turn into a broken promise from us. It also means the clock you are quoted is the clock we can actually keep.

Why is 8X slower than 4X?

Because two of its layers are biology and one is a hold. Endotoxin and the elemental sweep add bench time, and post-reconstitution stability requires the reconstituted solution to sit for at least 24 hours before it can be re-analysed. A stability result cannot be hurried without ceasing to be a stability result.

Do you offer a compendial USP 71 sterility test?

Yes, as a separate service line on its own timebase, not inside a fast tier. USP 71 needs a 14 day incubation. Layer 4 of our standard panels is a rapid molecular microarray screen, which returns in days and which we label a research screen on the certificate precisely so it is never mistaken for USP 71.

Where do I ship my sample?

The receiving address is issued with your order, so the vial arrives keyed to the right accession rather than to a general mailbox. Start on the submit page. Ship sealed, unopened vials only.

Reading your results

What the numbers mean, and the four ways they are commonly misread.

What does 99% purity actually mean?

It means that of everything the detector could see, 99% of the chromatographic area was the main peak. Our purity layer is RP-HPLC 214nm (USP 621), and 214 nm is the wavelength where the peptide bond absorbs. The number is a ratio, and the denominator is everything that absorbed at that wavelength and eluted during the run. That is the right denominator for related peptide impurities and it is the wrong denominator for anything without a chromophore.

How can a vial be 99% pure and still under-dosed?

Easily, and this is the single most common misreading in this market. Purity is a proportion; content is a quantity. A vial containing 5 mg of very clean peptide against a 10 mg label claim is 99% pure and half the labelled dose. Salts, counter-ions such as TFA, residual moisture and bulking agents do not absorb at 214 nm, so they never enter the purity denominator and cannot pull the percentage down. That is why net peptide content is a separate measurement rather than a second view of the same one.

What is net peptide content?

Quantitative HPLC vs reference std. It is the milligrams of the actual target compound in the vial, with moisture, salts and counter-ions stripped out, compared against the label claim. It is not the fill weight of the powder, and the gap between the two is routinely large.

Why does the identity result show ppm as well as daltons?

Because a mass error in daltons is not comparable across compounds. A 1.0 Da error is enormous on a 161 Da small molecule and unremarkable on a 4813 Da peptide. The ppm figure normalises the error against the molecule's own mass, so it is the number that tells you whether the identity is tight or merely inside a generous absolute window.

What is a mass basis, and why does it matter?

A molecule has two commonly quoted masses: the monoisotopic mass, using the most abundant isotope of each element, and the average mass, weighted across natural isotope abundance. They are different numbers for the same molecule. Comparing an observed monoisotopic reading against an average theoretical value produces an error that belongs to the reference rather than to the vial. Our certificates state the basis so the comparison is checkable.

Does a passing sterility screen mean the vial is safe to inject?

No, and nothing on our certificates should be read that way. Our testing is for research use. Separately from that: a rapid microbial screen is not a compendial sterility release, and sterility does not cover bacterial endotoxin, which is a heat-stable cell wall fragment that survives sterilisation. Sterility and endotoxin are two different questions needing two different tests.

What does not detected mean on the fentanyl screen?

Not present above the method detection limit, for the analogs on the target list. A targeted screen cannot rule out an adulterant it was not looking for, and we state the limit rather than implying an absolute.

Trust, accreditation and verification

What we hold, what we do not hold, and how to check a certificate without trusting us.

Is Axiom ISO 17025 accredited?

Axiom Analytics does not currently hold ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. Testing is conducted under a documented quality system, and the method-validation status is identified beside each reported result. This statement will be updated upon accreditation.

If you are not accredited, why should I trust a result?

Because the result is checkable and we tell you the strength of every method that produced it. Each layer on the certificate carries its own validation status: validated in-house, verified compendial, or research screen. That vocabulary is not decoration; it is the same typed field the certificate is built from, so a screening method can never be presented as a validated release assay. Accreditation is a real and separate thing that we do not have, and some of the labs we compete with do. If accreditation is a requirement for your use, use one of them.

How do I verify an Axiom certificate?

Look the report ID up against the laboratory record rather than trusting the copy you were sent. Scan the QR on the certificate, enter the report ID at axiomanalyticslab.com/verify, or call the public JSON endpoint. All three resolve to our servers, not to the vendor's, which is the property that makes verification worth anything.

Can I verify a certificate without trusting your website?

Yes. Every certificate carries an Ed25519 signature over a SHA-384 digest of a canonical payload. We publish the exact canonicalisation and digest recipe, the public keys as a JWKS, and a self-contained test vector, so you can reproduce the digest and verify the signature entirely offline with a standard crypto library. If our site were compromised tomorrow, a certificate you already hold would still be verifiable against keys you already have.

Can a vendor edit their certificate?

No. The certificate is signed over its own contents, so any change breaks the signature. A genuine correction goes through an amendment, which produces a new version, re-signs it, retains the superseded version, and records the reason. Authenticity and standing are two separate checks: a withdrawn certificate is still authentically signed, and our verification endpoint reports the signature and the state separately rather than collapsing them into one word.

Do you sell peptides, or take money from brands you test?

No. We own zero retail brands and zero inventory. We are a data-verification laboratory, and the only thing we sell is the analysis.

Are your certificates public?

A released certificate lives at its own public URL and anyone holding the report ID can retrieve and verify it. We deliberately do not publish a browsable directory or a per-brand index, because enumerating one client's whole testing history is that client's decision and not ours. If you want to see the full format before ordering, the public sandbox certificates at /coa/AX-DEMO-4X and /coa/AX-DEMO-8X are real, signed, verifiable documents on axiomanalyticslab.com.

Can I put my certificate on my own product page?

Yes. There is an embeddable widget and a public API, so a certificate can render on your site while still resolving against our servers. That is the point: an image of a certificate hosted by the seller proves nothing, and an embed that resolves to the laboratory does.

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