Dr. Rob O'Brien

My name is Dr. Rob O'Brien. I'm the CEO and CSO of Supra Research and Development. Previous to that I've been a university professor in analytical chemistry and I've been engaged with a number of different companies producing cannabis products, Valens GroWorks being the most notable. As well as setting up a series of labs, which received ISO 17025 accreditation.
In fact, we were the first in Canada to receive that accreditation under Supra Research and Development and Supra THC Services. So, our facility on Leckie Road here in Kelowna, British Columbia is an industrial space that is divided into two different sections.
We'll have our analytical lab section where we'll do testing of natural health products and cannabis. We'll also conduct research on cannabis and natural health products at that site. And then there's a separate compartmentalized lease where we have the production and processing of cannabis products. In those products, we're looking to make reference materials to use in the sector.
Key things like validation kits and quality control materials that other labs and processors will use in order to make sure that their analytical testing is valid. And we will also supply proficiency testing materials. So, in Canada, we now have edibles as a legal category. So, people can buy foodstuff that contain cannabinoid extracts or cannabis material.
So, there's a whole new set of regulations and testing protocols we're going to need in those products. The things like pesticides, residual solvents, mycotoxins, really the analysis isn't much different than the foodstuff now. However, when you start adding the cannabinoids, these are a very fatty material, if you like, that are going into a very fatty product category.
So, the ones that are common are chocolates, gummies, and those types of candies that are very, very viscous, very difficult to make homogeneous. So, we have developed a method for chocolates and with chocolates what we do is we extract it hot with acetyl-nitro in an ultrasonic bath. And then when we move the cannabinoids out, we also then draw those waxes and other fats out.
And these things are very difficult with the columns that we want to use afterward. If you direct this directly on UHPLC, they will literally clog up the front end. So, in order to get rid of those, we've developed a new cryogenic focusing thing where we take the material and freeze it out at minus 20 to remove the waxes prior to this and that method has worked quite well to allow us to get both high extraction efficiency and reproducibility and accuracy.
So, in addition to this suite of instrumentation that we already have, we're looking to buy the new Altis Triple Quad LC-MS with the Vanquish HPLC and as well the FAMEs interface. This will allow us not only to do the routine pesticide testing that's required in foodstuff in plant material as well as mycotoxins, but it will also ensure with the FAMEs front end that we can discriminate if there's a false positive or not.
Sometimes you can get a signal that looks like a positive result that's simply an interference. So, the immobility in the front end and the form of FAMEs will allow us to separate that out.