Behind the Scenes at Nootropics Depot: Inside Our Pharmaceutical-Grade Testing Labs 🧪

Im very surprised that the Amyloban is that "one sided". It really does not look like it, no clue if i can blame the wobbly baseline or if i just have to bite the bullet and get glasses.

You have to look at the actual peak areas numbers below the chromatogram, and then look at the response factor conversion. Peak height doesn't directly correlate to concentration, as each hericene and hericenone has different response factors based on their chromophore. Our system calculates the absolute % of each peak in the table, though, so you don't have to do any math.

Just a quick educational piece on liquid chromatography with UV detectors... The peaks you see are the compounds as they come out of the column. What the machine "sees" are only the chromophores of the molecule, or the conjugated pi systems. You can usually spot chromophores by looking for double bonded carbon chains, either in the ring system or in sidechains. This is the only thing a UV detector can detect. Each molecule will either have a chromophore or it won't. If it doesn't, you can't see it on UV. You have to then use a different detector, like mass spec or ELSD. If they do have a chromophore, not all of them are the same. The number of double bonded carbons in the molecule will determine how strong/high of a peak there will be on the chromatogram. This is call the response factor. A molecule with a strong chromophore will appear with a bigger peak than one with a weak chromophore, even if that strong chromophore molecule is at much lower absolute % than the other compound. This is why you have to use primary reference standards in your methods, and do very good validation work with spike recovery and linearity analyses. It's not as simple as bigger peak means more in the sample.

One really good example of this is withanolides in ashwagandha. There are two main sets of base structures that make up the withanolides. One of them has a strong chromophore and one of them has a weak chromophore. Then you have some that are aglycones and some that are glycosides. The glycoside groups don't have any extra double bonded carbons, as they are sugars, so those groups add a lot of mass to the withanolide glycosides, but they do not add anything to the actual peak height on a chromatogram. This means that the response factor you use for each peak makes MASSIVE differences in the final total % number. The same goes for hericenes and hericenones. They are not glycosides, but they do have bulky fatty acid sidechains that do not add anything to the response factor, but do account for a lot of mass of the molecules. This means the response factor you use is crucial for valid total % numbers. This is why it took us so long to develop a method for them. We had to isolate and make reference standards for 10 hericenes and hericenones, then do a ton of validation work to determine the response factors and linearity in various matrices. I've seen other people come out with methods that make tons of assumptions without using primary reference standards with proper validation, and their numbers are WAY OFF. This is why proper analytical chemistry takes time. It's also probably part of the reason our method paper we submitted to the journal of AOAC last June is taking so long in peer review. We are the first people in the world to develop this method, so there are not enough qualified scientists to act as experienced peer reviewers. We did share our method with Nammex's lab, and they have replicated and validated the chemistry, but they had to decline the peer review because they work with us now. So they are not unaffiliated. Anyway, I meant this to be a short explanation, but I think I am incapable of that. LOL

I just looked at the other chromatogram that you have posted of your 1:1 and even you guys have quite a bit of variation, too be far, that could just have been an outlier for some reason, it was the 0.5% total, but that one had 0.05% hericene A/B compared this this batches 0.1%. Considering that this is unextracted in the sense that you dont remove anything, i can imagine itd be even harder to precisely pinpoint what you bioactive profile "is" or "should be". Its a very good point that there hasnt been another analysis of Amyloban so its a bit hard to get a feel for how standardised their bioactive "profile" is.

Yeah, we have still been optimizing the batches since we developed the methods. Keep in mind, some of our suppliers are still kept in the dark on the numbers. We didn't want China to immediately steal our IP, so we have been having them change parameters for us, but not telling them why or sharing the backend data with them on it. It's a delicate balancing act with quick optimization without giving away the farm to our competition. Hell, I just found out that Oriveda's new lion's mane mycelium is just our Erinamax! They bought the same raw material as us through an EU intermediary, and our partners in Taiwan didn't realize who it was. So in the end, they were able to bring out a lion's mane mycelium that met specs by just selling the same thing as us. If you can't beat them, join them, right? We are still way ahead on fruiting bodies, though. However, people will catch up soon; especially since I am allowing everyone to send samples to Omnient for testing. We are providing the data that is allowing our competition to advance to compete with us. It is really kind of dumb when you think about it. I spend millions of dollars trying to advance the science, get shit on for years by these competitors, then ultimately they use my science and my lab to make a better product to compete with us. I am just more interested in advancing the science than I am about cornering the market. However, I am not sharing everything I know. That would be stupid on my part, on top of the already stupid business decision of me offering testing to competitors and being pretty open here on Reddit.

Thats very interesting regarding herinacerins, i dont remember what Pretty-Chill said in your lions mane podcast, but are those more so present in that other species of lions mane, the one with the corralocins?

There are not other species of lion's mane. There are other species of Hericium, but they have other common names. I do think there is a lot of misidentification going on in the Hericium world, especially wildcrafted ones. We have been doing more DNA characterization and NMR work to really understand the taxonomy of what we are working with. But yes, different species make different amounts of ratios of these bioactives. We just have never seen any meaningful amounts of hericerins or corallocins in any lion's mane samples. Finding 10ppb using a QToF is meaningless in the real world, IMO.

I see, thats fair enough lol. Basically you are just feeding your inner lab rat. Do feel free to report on whatever you figure out. Also i just realised that the 50 mg extract is pretty much like downing an entire tub of 1:1 for 1 dose, really puts it into perspective. Really does make me wonder about how strong the 8:1 is, it obviously cant be 10%, maybe 5% is stretching it, 2.5% maybe? Who knows, time will tell. Im very excited for whats coming.

Yes, me taking 50mg of hericenes and hericenones is absolutely crazy. I bet nobody else in the world has taken that high of a dose. However, I am used to that. I bet I am still the only one in the world to have taken a 24mg dose of Semax. LOL. At current costs, a bottle of the material that I used to take the 50mg dose would cost $170. It's cool, but nobody will pay that amount. I have cool shit that I have made and taken over the years that I have not even talked about, much less released to the public. I made an analog of Modafinil that felt like it was half moda and half amphetamine. It was one of the coolest compounds I have ever tried. However, it was just a white powder in a bag in my office, and the government seized it and destroyed it when they raided us. I was not selling it. It was purely for research, but they took it. I suppose I could synthesize it again. Maybe I will at some point.

It would be very cool if you could get an extract high in that erinacine compound, i was first drawn to cistanche because i thought/ hoped that it could also upregulate neuronal steroidogenesis, but that does not seem to be the case unfortunately, so having an alternative would be very cool.

We can and will. It has been reproduced at lab scale already, and we are in the process of trying to scale it up to production sizes. That's the hardest part with liquid culture mycelium, to be honest. You can get a lot to work at bench scale that you cannot get to work at production scale. Scaling is a difficult thing to tackle with some of these fungi.