Via a Google News search for "chemist", this article from Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Just a few weeks after naming the first licensed psilocybin manufacturer in the state, Oregon has granted a license to a Portland company to test the mushrooms for potency.
In naming Rose City Laboratories the first company to be allowed to do the testing, the Oregon Health Authority said: “Accurate labeling of psilocybin potency allows clients to participate in administration sessions with products that meet their needs.”
Björn Fritzsche is a chemist with Rose City Labs. He says the company’s years of experience in testing cannabis products will translate easily to this new work.
“The process for the potency testing is surprisingly similar,” Fritzsche says. “The solvents that we use for extraction are a little bit different, but the actual technology that we use — high pressure liquid chromatography — is very similar.”
Still, this is a new frontier in medicine, and Fritzsche is excited about the possibilities.
“I get to do something new, something that hasn’t really been done at scale before,” Fritzsche says. “I was actually able to develop new methodologies, do something that hadn’t been done before. And that’s really interesting.”
This isn't really my thing (psilocybin, that is), but it seems to me that it is important for these things to be regulated and standardized for the general public. Glad to see it's happening.
Maybe it's pedantic but I'm sure he means high PERFORMANCE liquid chromatography. It was drilled into my brain in undergrad that you'd be laughed out of the room if you said high PRESSURE LC in an interview, along with saying "Mass Spectroscopy" instead of Spectrometry.
ReplyDeleteMy undergrad analytical professor did his PhD thesis on HPLC, and I remember him specifically mentioning in a lecture that the P could stand for either Pressure or Performance.
DeleteLogically speaking, it must be "high performance" chromatography - no one would admit that they did low performance chromatography at high pressure!
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