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Reverse Engineering
When a chemist or formulator reverse engineers a product, are they able to get the exact percentages of each ingredient? tks
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10 Replies
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Difficult to be exact unless one has sophisticated analytical resources ie HPLC—AA-Mass spec etc.Most approximate based on order of LOI.
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In general I would say no but it depends. We reverse engineer many products and in many cases we can provide an equal or often times better product than the benchmark. There are certain labs that can reverse engineer products for exact ingredient amounts though. Don’t be too surprised if you discover it contains products in it that shouldn’t be there or if the amounts of certain ingredients aren’t what they claim to be. We see it fairly often which is unfortunate.
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thanks
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The first thing I would do would be to put a weighed sample in a dessicating chamber to remove all the water. What’s left will be all the lipids and solids etc.
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Unless you have the formula of the competitor, it’s doubtful you can reverse engineer it exactly. But in formulating, you don’t have to be exact to meet consumer expectations.
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Can someone suggest a good lab for reverse engineering an OTC eye drop in a reasonable budget?
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Define “reasonable budget” … they type of work you are looking for is generally quite pricey.
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I agree with Dr BOB, you need a good GCMS etc and still you wouldn’t get the exact %
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@MZH consider yourself lucky if you can get that done for less than $10,000
Not only the lab will need GC-MS to identify the ingredients (with a large library to match results)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography–mass_spectrometryThey’ll also need HPLC to accurately quantify the chemicals found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_liquid_chromatography
They’ll need to order reference standards, find a suitable method or devise one themselves, make calibration curves, repeat 6+ times to ensure repeatability, and so on.You’d get better results asking the FDA (or similar office in your country) about product registration forms, listing the ingredients.
Beware of patents. -
with a few exceptions, I have almost never determined the exact percentages when reverse-engineering products - for the most part it’s been a matter of educated guesswork, and most of the time, that’s all that’s requiredalso if you have a mixture of essential oils, or vegetable/plant seed oils, you’ll have great difficulty identifying and characterising them by chemical analysis@Gunther in Europe the compositions declared on the Cosmetic Product Notification Portal are strictly confidential, only visible to the Responsible Person and poisons centres/regulatory authorities
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