NutraCast: How Purity-IQ ‘fingerprints’ natural products

When someone mentions fingerprints, many would associate that with shows like CSI or Forensic Files. But not many would link that term to ingredients. Purity-IQ is a biotech company that uses molecular diagnostic methods for ingredient authentication. The company’s mission is to advance supply chain verification to protect customers and to promote honesty in consumer product labeling.

Purity-IQ uses Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and real-time PCR to determine the content and purity of a product at the molecular level.

Deleo de Leonardis, Purity-IQ’s CEO, said that when it comes to testing for adulteration, NMR is the best option because of its non-targeted approach.

“NMR provides a complete picture of all the compounds in a product. So, not just one specific predefined target. So you're looking for X and the targeted method will tell you if X is there, but it won't tell you if anything else is in there. So that I think is really a critical differentiator versus targeted methods. So that's the power of untargeted versus targeted testing methodologies and that's why we selected NMR as one of the cornerstones of our science.”

The company taps this technology for a variety of products, ranging from pet food to people food and even probiotics.

“We use DNA methodologies for probiotics and why? Because it works very well for probiotics. So specifically, we use qPCR, a type of real-time PCR for probiotic identification and viability PCR for enumeration. In the case of identification, what's special about the method we use is it does strain-specific identification versus other methods that only do species level and this is important because probiotic health benefits are actually strain specific. So that’s really important, to be able to go down to that level.  In the case of enumeration testing where we use viability PCR, again this is strain specific, we can actually determine viable counts. In other words, the quantity or the count of the microorganism,” explained de Leonardis.

To hear more on this technology why Leonardis said companies can’t hide from NMR, listen to the NutraCast.

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Purity-IQ was selected as a Probiota Pioneer and will be at Probiota to discuss how the company leverages its technology to identify specific probiotic strains.