Quality Assurance / Quality Control

Cortex Scientific Botanicals establishes comprehensive specifications for all aspects of the raw material sourcing, manufacturing, and testing processes. Both raw materials and finished products are subjected to strict scrutiny and testing; our QC program includes a complete battery of identity, purity, and quality tests using TLC, HPLC, GC, AAS, and other techniques. But our quality doesn’t depend only on testing; rather, quality is built into the product through careful control of sourcing, handling, extraction, and drying. All aspects of our processes are carefully documented and reviewed by QA.

Cortex Scientific Botanicals performs most quantitative marker analyses using HPLC. Some cases, however, call for other techniques. For example, our stephania root extract (Stephania tetrandra) is tested using LC/MS to guarantee it is free of toxic aristolochic acid.

In their dried state, the beneficial stephania root and the toxic aristolochia root can be easily confused. Therefore, we never buy stephania from herb markets, where it might be misidentified; rather, we go directly to growers in areas where no aristolochia is found. To further ensure the purity of our stephania, we test every lot of our material for aristolochic acid.

Aristolochic acid can be detected at very low levels (ppm) using LC/MS (above).

Cortex Scientific Botanicals tests every lot of our stephania extract to ensure it is free of this dangerous chemical.