Manufacturing in the United Kingdom

Synthesis and purification

Most short peptides are assembled by solid-phase synthesis, in which the chain is built one residue at a time on a solid support. The crude product that comes off the resin is a mixture: the target sequence alongside truncated chains, deletion sequences and side products. Purification is what separates them, and it is where most of the difference between a good and a poor peptide is decided.

Larger molecules such as recombinant proteins are produced biologically rather than synthetically, in an expression system, and purified by a different route. The principle is the same: the crude material is not the product, the purified and characterised material is.

Drying and filling

Purified peptide is freeze-dried to remove water, because a dry solid is far more stable than a solution. How thoroughly that drying is done affects how long the material lasts, since residual moisture drives several degradation routes.

Vials are filled and sealed to a stated content. The figure on the label refers to the specified peptide content of the vial.

Records that persist

A batch record ties together the synthesis, the purification, the analysis and the fill. It is what allows a specific vial, months later, to be traced to the material it came from. Without retained records, a batch number is decoration.

REVIVE LAB retains batch records and links them to the verification system, so that a printed RVL code resolves against production data rather than against a list of numbers that were simply printed.