After the Peptide Sciences Shutdown: How to Vet a Replacement Vendor in 2026

2026 has thinned the herd. Peptide Sciences shut down in March, Amino Asylum was raided by the FDA, and at least seven other vendors closed through 2025. If your usual source disappeared, you are not alone — and you are right to be careful about where you move next. Buying a research compound from an unvetted vendor is how people end up with an under-filled, mislabeled, or non-existent product.

Here is a practical, no-hype checklist for vetting a replacement — the same criteria the more skeptical corners of the research community now insist on.

1. Demand a lot-specific COA you can see before you buy

A Certificate of Analysis is only meaningful if it ties to the exact lot in your vial. The red flags:

• A generic sheet that looks identical across every product
• No named third-party lab, or "in-house testing" only
• A purity percentage with no chromatogram behind it
• No lot number, or one that does not match the label

A real COA names a contactable third-party lab, shows an HPLC purity read off an attached chromatogram, confirms identity by mass spectrometry, and carries a lot number that matches your vial. New to reading them? Our free COA checker walks the red flags, and how to read a COA explains the three numbers that matter.

2. Purity and identity — they are different questions

Purity tells you how much of the sample is one compound. Identity confirms it is the right compound. A vial that is 99% pure of the wrong peptide is still 99% pure. Insist on both.

3. Independent verification, not just a hosted image

The strongest vendors publish testing you can confirm independently — a named lab, dated certificates, and results anyone can cross-reference. Third-party testing platforms now aggregate this, and buyers increasingly check them before ordering.

4. Watch how they handle problems

Longevity, public business information, responsive support, and a clear policy when something is wrong (reship or refund) separate a real operation from a fly-by-night one. A vendor that gets defensive when you ask for documentation is answering the question for you.

5. Transparency over marketing

Generic promises about "premium quality" no longer carry weight. Proof does: published COAs, disclosed testing methods, and honest framing about what the documentation does and does not establish.

A disclosed example

Full transparency: The Peptide Review is published with support from NovaForge Labs, a US research-materials supplier that third-party HPLC-tests every lot and publishes the lot-specific COA. Everything is supplied strictly for laboratory research use only. We flag it as one sourcing option to evaluate against the checklist above — not as an endorsement to skip the diligence. Run the same checks on anyone, including them.

The short version

The shakeout is painful, but it is also a filter: the vendors that survive on verifiable testing are the ones worth your research. Make a real, lot-specific COA the deciding factor, confirm identity as well as purity, and never let marketing stand in for proof.