AHPA Awards Donated Lab Equipment to ICT

SILVER SPRING, M.D.American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) awarded a complete set of donated analytical laboratory equipment to Massachusetts company International Chemistry Testing Inc. (ICT).

Albert Leung, Ph.D., president and founder of Phyto-Technologies, donated the lab equipment, which included gas chromatograph, high-performance liquid chromatograph, and high-performance thin-layer chromatograph (HPTLC) systems, spectrophotometers, balances, a rotary evaporator, fume hoods, workbenches and more.

In exchange for the equipment, ICT will donate 40 hours each month to chemistry-related projects for AHPA and the AHPA Foundation for Education and Research on Botanicals (AHPA-ERB Foundation). For one of these projects, ICT proposed an industry-wide collaborative research program for botanical authenticity. Boxin Ou, Ph.D., and Tony Chang, Ph.D., ICT owners, said the donation will help the company address important issues in the natural products industry, including authenticity, standardization and efficacy.

Drs. Ou and Chang have been at the forefront natural products research for more than a decade and are acutely aware of the confusion that exists in the industry when trying to choose the most accurate analyses for quantifying the level of an active ingredient or whether that ingredient has health functionality," said AHPA Chief Scientist Steven Dentali, Ph.D. "

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