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FLC chemists lead the way to safety in growing cannabis industry [VIDEO]
Commercial cannabis in Colorado has quickly burgeoned into a multi-million dollar industry since its legalization in the state in 2012. The wide variety of marijuana and marijuana-derived products available in the medical and recreational markets is now creating another industry: analyzing these products’ contents and verifying their safety.
With these goals in mind, a new regulatory marijuana testing facility in Durango is providing that information to cannabis providers, and it’s powered by chemists from Fort Lewis College.
Aurum Labs, launched in 2014 by junior Chemistry major Tyler D’Spain and alumnus Luke Mason (Chemistry, ’05), provides state-certified testing services to those producers. Today, the business has five total employees – three other FLC Chemistry graduates, plus Mason and D’Spain.
D’Spain’s greatest inspiration in starting the business was his mother. “My mom is actually a two-time cancer survivor,” he says. “She got me interested in it. She got her medical marijuana card to help with chemotherapy sickness, pain, and sleep troubles.”
“My interest in chemistry, my interest on the marijuana side, and knowing that I could eventually help people with my knowledge were the motivation for getting in,” he adds. “The value is in having access to safe marijuana.”
Like most successful businesses, Aurum Labs started with a bit of good fortune and a lot of determination. “I bought a bus and a gas chromatograph,” D’Spain recalls. “It was a mobile church bus that had a generator. It was quite the apparatus, a portable laboratory. With that and a little help from the professors at Fort Lewis, I got the business running.”
It was during the days of the mobile lab that he and Mason joined forces, D’Spain says. FLC linked the rest of the Aurum team together. Mason and Amy Carr Spencer (Chemistry, ’04) conducted research together as undergraduates. After Spencer, a Marie Curie Fellow, graduated and went to graduate school, Mason met John Wade (Chemistry, ’07) working together in the same lab class. Aurum later added Matthew Ryle (Chemistry, ’94) via a job posting.
Aurum Labs today focuses primarily on safety testing in its warehouse laboratory. “A lot of the techniques we’re using are just standard food safety testing,” says Ryle. For instance, the lab’s microbial screening detects the presence of E. coli, salmonella, and harmful molds and yeasts that can arise in agricultural settings. “We’re just applying it to a new matrix,” he says.
Aurum Labs also conducts residual solvent analysis, which detects leftover contaminants from the processing of the cannabis plant, and cannabinoid profiling, which describes the presence of the plant’s various active and inactive components. The business has received provisional certification from the state of Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division for all three testing methods.
“Without what we do, there are no scientific data,” Wade says. “With these numbers, we can actually give people a framework to work with that is professional and real.”