GHRH Analog / SubQ / 100mcg 2-3x daily (pre-meal)

CJC-1295 No DAC

CJC-1295 No DAC is the ConjuChem molecule with its albumin-binding tail left off: the tetrasubstituted GRF(1-29) amide that the tail was designed to hang from. No CJC-1295 product was ever approved, so it reached people through research-chemical sales and through compounding pharmacies and the clinics they supply, and no published human trial has tested the linker-free peptide, because every human study run under the CJC-1295 name used the DAC conjugate instead.

In plain words

CJC-1295 No DAC is a lab-made copy of the working end of a natural hormone that tells the pituitary gland to release growth hormone, 29 building blocks long with four of them swapped so it survives a little longer in the blood. It is the same backbone as CJC-1295, but without the arm that latches onto a blood protein, so it clears in about half an hour instead of days. No published human trial has ever tested this linker-free version: every human study run under the CJC-1295 name used the version with the arm attached, and in those studies growth hormone pulses stayed the same size while the level between pulses rose. Reports of deeper sleep, tingling hands and mild fluid retention come from users rather than from studies, are neither controlled nor blinded, and usually describe it stacked with a second peptide. No CJC-1295 product has ever been approved: the company trial ended after a participant died, a cause that was investigated and never established as drug-related, and the program never resumed. The peptide reaches people through research-chemical sellers and compounding pharmacies rather than through a regulator.

At a glance

Half-life	0.021 days
Tmax	0.007 days
Route(s)	SubQ
Published dosing range	100mcg 2-3x daily (pre-meal)
Vial strengths	2, 5, 10 mg

Reference data from the DosePlot canon -- not a protocol recommendation.

Serum curve

Single 100 mcg dose by SubQ, rendered from the same engine that powers the interactive chart. Relative levels, not lab values.

Chart this compound

What does the evidence show?

Two things are labeled separately here because they answer different questions. The tier is how a study was built. The distance chips are whether that study touched this molecule, by this route, in a population resembling the reader. A randomized trial of a different molecule keeps its tier and still says nothing about this compound.

Finding	Tier	Distance from use	Study
The albumin-binding DAC version of this molecule has a measured half-life of 5.8 to 8.1 days: one subcutaneous dose raised mean plasma GH 2- to 10-fold for six days or more and IGF-1 1.5- to 3-fold for nine to eleven days in healthy adults.	rct	not recorded	Teichman SL, Neale A, Lawrence B, Gagnon C, Castaigne JP, Frohman LA. Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults.Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 91(3):799-805, 2006
Continuous GHRH-receptor stimulation did not flatten GH pulses in men: after a single 60 or 90 mcg/kg dose of the DAC version, pulse frequency and pulse magnitude were unchanged, while the trough between pulses rose 7.5-fold, mean GH rose 46 percent and IGF-1 rose 45 percent.	clinical	not recorded	Ionescu M, Frohman LA. Pulsatile secretion of growth hormone (GH) persists during continuous stimulation by CJC-1295, a long-acting GH-releasing hormone analog.Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 91(12):4792-4797, 2006
Unmodified GHRH is destroyed at its amino terminus by a plasma dipeptidyl aminopeptidase. Injected intravenously in normal subjects it had a half-life of 6.8 minutes, and the clipped product retained less than one-thousandth of the parent activity.	clinical	not recorded	Frohman LA, Downs TR, Williams TC, Heimer EP, Pan YC, Felix AM. Rapid enzymatic degradation of growth hormone-releasing hormone by plasma in vitro and in vivo to a biologically inactive product cleaved at the NH2 terminus.Journal of Clinical Investigation 78(4):906-913, 1986
Four substitutions define this backbone: D-Ala at position 2, Gln at 8, Ala at 15, Leu at 27. What the cited work measured is narrower than the backbone. Three albumin conjugates of GRF(1-29) all showed improved stability in vitro against dipeptidyl peptidase-4, the enzyme that clips the amino terminus; nothing was reported per substitution, and no other plasma protease was tested. In rats the best of the three stayed detectable in plasma beyond 72 hours and produced about four times the two-hour GH area under the curve of unmodified GRF(1-29).	preclinical	not recorded	Jette L, Leger R, Thibaudeau K, et al. Human growth hormone-releasing factor (hGRF)1-29-albumin bioconjugates activate the GRF receptor on the anterior pituitary in rats: identification of CJC-1295 as a long-lasting GRF analog.Endocrinology 146(7):3052-3058, 2005
The measured synergy behind pairing a GHRH peptide with a GH-releasing peptide was shown with GHRP-6, not with ipamorelin. In 18 normal men, submaximal 0.1 and 0.3 mcg/kg doses of the hexapeptide His-DTrp-Ala-Trp-DPhe-Lys-NH2 given with 1 mcg/kg GHRH(1-44) amide stimulated GH release synergistically, which the authors read as the two peptides acting through independent mechanisms. Ipamorelin, the pentapeptide the common modern stack uses instead, was not in that study, and the public trial registry lists no trial pairing it with a GHRH analog.	clinical	not recorded	Bowers CY, Reynolds GA, Durham D, Barrera CM, Pezzoli SS, Thorner MO. Growth hormone (GH)-releasing peptide stimulates GH release in normal men and acts synergistically with GH-releasing hormone.Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 70(4):975-982, 1990
Brief facial flushing is an effect of the GHRH peptide itself. Mild facial flushing lasting one to three minutes occurred in 16 of the 18 normal men given synthetic GHRH(1-44) amide by intravenous bolus in a controlled study, so flushing on its own does not indicate anything about the material in a particular vial.	clinical	not recorded	Bowers CY, Reynolds GA, Durham D, Barrera CM, Pezzoli SS, Thorner MO. Growth hormone (GH)-releasing peptide stimulates GH release in normal men and acts synergistically with GH-releasing hormone.Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 70(4):975-982, 1990
Community protocols converge on roughly 100 mcg per dose, two or three times daily and away from food, on the reasoning that a peptide cleared in about half an hour has to land in a window when somatostatin tone is low and insulin is not blunting the response.	anecdotal	not recorded	community reports aggregated from reddit, MESO-Rx, and similar forumsno study
The effects users report most often are deeper sleep in the first weeks, transient tingling or numbness in the hands, and mild water retention. These reports are uncontrolled, unblinded, and usually describe a GHRH peptide stacked with a GHRP rather than used alone.	anecdotal	not recorded	community reports aggregated from reddit, MESO-Rx, and similar forumsno study

How did it get here?

preclinical1982: A 44-residue growth hormone-releasing factor is isolated from a human pancreatic tumor that had caused acromegaly, and the synthetic replicate reproduces its activity. The first 29 residues turn out to carry that activity, and GRF(1-29) becomes the scaffold every later analog is built on.
preclinical1986-1989: Work at the University of Cincinnati shows that a plasma dipeptidyl aminopeptidase clips the first two residues off GHRH within minutes, leaving a fragment with almost no biological activity. The same group names the enzyme, dipeptidylpeptidase IV, and finds the defense: a D-amino acid at position 1 or 2 prevents the cleavage. Any peptide meant to survive in circulation will have to defend position 2.
preclinical2005: A Montreal biotech reports the tetrasubstituted GRF(1-29) backbone fitted with a maleimide-bearing lysine that latches onto cysteine-34 of serum albumin, and names the conjugate CJC-1295. The same backbone without the latch is the molecule now sold as No DAC.
first-human2006: Two human studies of the DAC conjugate publish: an ascending-dose safety and pharmacokinetic trial, and a study of overnight GH pulsatility. A participant in the company's phase 2 trial in HIV-associated visceral obesity dies in July, and the company announces in August that it has terminated the study. The cause was investigated and never established as drug-related, but the program did not resume and no CJC-1295 product was ever approved. That study is still the only CJC-1295 trial on the public registry, where it stands as terminated.
grey-market2008-2010: The linker-free 29-mer spreads through research-chemical channels as CJC-1295 No DAC or Mod GRF (1-29), dosed daily rather than weekly. In 2009 a national doping-control laboratory, asked by police and customs to identify an unlabeled preparation, sequences a 29-residue amidated peptide matching what was then sold under the CJC-1295 name.
grey-market2023: FDA dates its category 2 placements for the neighboring growth hormone peptides, GHRP-2, GHRP-6, ipamorelin acetate and kisspeptin-10, to September 29, 2023. CJC-1295 is handled on the same interim-policy page, but in a separate table headed bulk drug substances nominated but withdrawn, which FDA describes as substances previously in category 2 whose nominations the nominators withdrew. That table carries no date column, so neither the placement nor the withdrawal has a date FDA has published. The agency's stated concerns are immunogenicity by some routes of administration, peptide-related impurities, characterization of the active ingredient, limited clinical data, and serious adverse events identified with CJC-1295 including increased heart rate and systemic vasodilatory reaction. A withdrawn nomination is not a clearance: the codified 503A list of bulk substances that may be used in compounding names six substances, and CJC-1295 is not one of them. One caution about the name: FDA and the anti-doping bodies use the bare CJC-1295 for the albumin-binding DAC conjugate, while the linker-free peptide on this page is the one sold as No DAC or Mod GRF (1-29).

How is it made?

Production happens in three stages.

1. Building the chain. The peptide is assembled by solid-phase synthesis on a resin bead, one residue at a time, working from the tail end backwards. Each amino acid arrives with its reactive groups capped so it can only join at one point; the cap comes off, the next residue couples, and the cycle repeats twenty-nine times. The four substitutions that define this molecule are not a later modification. They are simply which bottle is opened at steps 2, 8, 15 and 27. The resin is picked to release an amide rather than a free acid, because that is how this peptide ends.

2. Cutting it loose and cleaning it up. Strong acid, usually trifluoroacetic acid, cleaves the chain off the resin and strips the side-chain protection in one step. The crude peptide is precipitated and separated by preparative reverse-phase chromatography, which is where truncated and deletion sequences are removed; mass spectrometry confirms identity. The No DAC molecule stops here. The DAC version goes through one further reaction that attaches the albumin-binding arm.

3. Filling the vial. The peptide is dissolved, sterile-filtered, dispensed and freeze-dried, usually with a bulking agent such as mannitol. Two numbers separate a regulated product from an unregulated one, and neither is visible in the vial: net peptide content, since labeled milligrams of powder are part peptide and part water and counterion salt, and bacterial endotoxin. The synthesis is ordinary chemistry. The sterile filling and the batch testing are what vary.

Worth knowing

The first hard chemical record of what was actually in the vials came from a police case rather than a laboratory bench. In 2009 the Norwegian doping-control laboratory analyzed an unlabeled preparation submitted by police and customs and identified a 29-residue peptide with a C-terminal amide whose sequence matched the material then marketed as CJC-1295. Twenty-nine residues ending in an amide is the linker-free molecule; the DAC conjugate carries an added lysine beyond it.

Henninge J, Pepaj M, Hullstein I, Hemmersbach P. Identification of CJC-1295, a growth-hormone-releasing peptide, in an unknown pharmaceutical preparation.Drug Testing and Analysis 2(11-12):647-650, 2010

Anti-doping chemistry treats the two forms as two different analytes. A 2021 method paper covering four of the larger GHRH analogs lists sermorelin, tesamorelin, CJC-1295, and CJC-1295 with drug affinity complex as four separate targets. It identified nineteen major in vitro metabolites of them, synthesized and characterized those metabolites as reference materials, and built a urine assay whose detection limits were generally at or below the 1 ng/mL performance limit anti-doping laboratories are required to meet. The paper names the awkward gap it was written to close: use of these peptides is known from admissions and intelligence, yet accredited laboratories were not finding them in samples.

Memdouh S, Gavrilovic I, Ng K, Cowan D, Abbate V. Advances in the detection of growth hormone releasing hormone synthetic analogs.Drug Testing and Analysis 13(11-12):1871-1887, 2021

The published human literature on this peptide is thinner than the published literature about the people using it. A 2016 study analyzed twenty-three discussion threads on female use of CJC-1295 drawn from nine bodybuilding forums, and found users reasoning explicitly about sex differences in GH pulse patterns when they set doses.

Van Hout MC, Hearne E. Netnography of female use of the synthetic growth hormone CJC-1295: pulses and potions.Substance Use and Misuse 51(1):73-84, 2016

Reconstitution

CJC-1295 No DAC ships lyophilized and is mixed before use; the published vial strengths are 2, 5, 10 mg. The water volume you add sets the concentration, not the dose -- the calculator turns a vial size and a water volume into mg/mL, draw volume, and units on an insulin syringe.

Open in the reconstitution calculator

Written and reviewed by Evan Marlow, developer of DosePlot · Updated 2026-08-27

Not medical advice. DosePlot is an informational tool, not a healthcare provider, and using it creates no provider-patient relationship. Do not start, stop, or change any protocol without the approval of a licensed healthcare professional.

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