In a nondescript industrial park just north of Tucson International Airport, scientists at Titan Laboratories are hard at work. Some are breaking up specimens in specially designed centrifuges, others wait for the latest readout from a near-million-dollar piece of machinery on a diagnostic test looking for pesticides to the parts-per-billion.
βSo this is the infrastructure,β says Robert Brodnick, CEO and one of the co-founders of Titan Labs, gesturing around the large streamlined space. βWe can point to the cooler, the nitrogen generator and all these things you donβt usually see in a cannabis testing lab.β
Thatβs right, despite its name, which evokes the defense or space industries, Titan Labs is the first third-party, comprehensive cannabis testing lab in Southern Arizona.
And while it waits for that last step of state approval, Titan is already running the sort of tests growers, product producers and, most importantly, dispensaries need to guarantee their products are within potency limits and free of contaminates.
Hereβs how one of the most advanced cannabis testing labs in the state came to be in Tucson, and how two ex-military officers, who used to run the nationβs premiere drug testing lab, eventually switched to a different kind of testing.
The origin story
While Titan Labs sits on Valencia Road now, its origins go back to Aberdeen, Maryland, home of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense.
Thatβs where Brodnick and Will English, the labβs other co-founder, had their first military assignment as officers together.
βWe just kind of had the same career pathways over eight, nine years between chemical and biodefense and then combat casualty care, then forensics at the end,β Brodnick explained.
That was before the duo got involved in testing for βdrugs of abuseβ for the Department of Defense in Hawaii. English was appointed the facilityβs technical director where Brodnick was the unitβs deputy commander. Englishβs wife, Maya Leonetti, oversaw quality control.
But after hearing some of the personal stories of soldiers and others who had tested positive for marijuana and how they had turned to the substance to treat pain or avoid opiates, both decided to make a move to the other side of the testing aisle.
βWe all kind of looked at the cannabis space at the same time and said, βWe need to go be on that side of things a little bit more,ββ Will English said.
Soon, the duo formed a consulting firm to help fix and set up other analytical cannabis testing labs in other states, with a primary focus in California, according Brodnick. Eventually, they decided to look for a state they could set up their own lab.
First, however, they had to find financial backers. Where they could find those initial investors would prove important.
βWe were wheelinβ and dealing with some Chicago guys. The Chicago guys knew these Tucson guys and the Chicago guysβ deal fell through,β Leonetti said. βAnd thank God!β
Ultimately the Tucson guys, led by local ear, nose and throat Dr. Robert Dean, materialized as the groupβs best shot for getting their own lab started.
Once things were finalized, the duo and their wives moved to Tucson in December 2020 and went about the work of building the lab of their dreams from scratch. It would be no small undertaking, especially during a global pandemic and supply crunch.
βEverything just went a little bit slower,β Brodnick said. βEverything got done remotely, but it all took a quarter longer than it was supposed to for construction. Same thing happened when we went to install our instruments.β
Now that the lab is mostly built out and there is enough equipment to conduct the tests for Arizonaβs Big 5 (potency, pesticides, microbes, heavy metals and residual solvents), the challenge is in clearing the final hurdle set by the state to be an approved third-party testing facility.
βI know the investors would have liked this to have been done about nine months ago, but it took time,β English said.
βAvengers of cannabis testingβ
In the meantime, since the state allows for some partial testing, and since local growers and dispensaries are already looking for a local alternative to having to drive at least an hour and a half north to the nearest state-approved testing facility, English and Brodnick have hired a crew of fellow scientists to help conduct the necessary tests.
While many labs focus on hiring from talent pools within the marijuana industry, Titan went about staffing a little differently.
According to Brodnick, he and English wanted to build a team of experts with different professional backgrounds and specialties. He described it as βassembling the Avengers of cannabis testing.β
To test for heavy metals, they brought in Davian Pedroza. Pedroza, who sports a background in mining and precious metals, had plenty of experience with the machinery that uses mass spectrometers to ferret out impurities and was able to apply those same skills to looking for similar metals in marijuana.
βAt the end of the day, itβs in a sense less about actual cannabis,β he said. βAs the guy whoβs been doing chemistry for some time compounds are compounds, OK? I used to take copper out of rocks and now, Iβm taking iron out of plants.β
Still, some of the talent drawn to Titan comes from within the marijuana industry, too. Tristan Davis, a chemist, started his work in marijuana extracts and distillates, a branch of cannabis products that is known for having high levels of the psychoactive compound THC, or Tetrahydrocannabinol.
Davis said he was drawn to Titan because of the mission the lab stands for: changing the perception of a product often thought of as verboten by mainstream society into something that is quantifiable and held to safe, scientific standards.
βWeβre providing the community with a lot of beneficial information,β he said. βBecause you take an extraction lab who provides this concentrate product to people, and then it takes this kind of lab to provide the analysis so that the consumer knows what theyβre ingesting.β
Thatβs a sentiment Davisβ fellow chemist, Kristyn Chiappone β who came to Titan from a forensic drug testing lab β shares. Chiappone said she was ready for a change from finding drugs in peopleβs systems to finding out how drugs will affect peopleβs systems.
βIβm continually learning new things every day,β she said. βSo I know the instrumentation β thatβs the same through everything β but what Iβm doing with it and what analytes Iβm testing for are very different.β
Brodnick said that on top of chemists and metallurgists, Titan also has microbiologists and other scientists on staff as well. And all it took to get everyone in the door was one free LinkedIn ad looking for help.
βIt was amazing,β Brodnick said. βYou could not have asked for a better, more talented group of people.β
The future
With a state-of-the-art lab ready to go and a staff of highly trained and qualified scientists ready to conduct the tests, all Titan is waiting on is final state approval to start the countdown to blastoff.
English, who on top of being co-founder is also the labβs technical director, said heβs been ready for things to officially start up. While he said heβs anxious to get going, he understands the wait.
βWeβre not going to do anything before this state lets us. That is just kinda the way it is.β
In the meantime, both English and Brodnick are already thinking expansion. Theyβre already in possession of the space next door in the industrial complex, a space they plan to use to expand the lab even more.
And since the machinery and technical equipment at Titan is so advanced and new to the industry, both men believe itβs just a matter of time before some producers and brands are asking for tests to determine other profile characteristics in cannabis besides just potency.
βItβs all these different cannabinoids and what other biological interactions do you have with cannabis in nature? Now weβre learning so much cool stuff,β he said.