RESEARCH CONSOLE / 03
CJC-1295 doses in the research literature — and why there is no established human dose.
The doses administered in published PK and preclinical work, the route studied, the half-life, and how the peptide is handled. Research framing only; no human dosing is recommended.
Doses Used in the Research Literature
There is no established human dose for CJC-1295. It is not approved for human use, and the published human data come from early pharmacokinetic studies, not from dose-finding efficacy trials [1][12]. That distinction governs this entire page: what follows is a record of what was administered in studies, not a protocol for use.
What the literature records, in research units: human PK studies used single subcutaneous doses of 30, 60, or 90 ug/kg [1][2]. The 30- and 60-ug/kg doses produced dose-dependent 2- to 10-fold GH increases and 1.5- to 3-fold IGF-1 increases in healthy adults [1]; the 60- and 90-ug/kg doses raised basal GH about 7.5-fold and IGF-1 about 45% in healthy men, with pulsatility preserved [2]. In GHRH-knockout mice, the growth-normalization study used 2 ug per dose at 24-, 48-, or 72-hour intervals, with the once-daily schedule fully effective and the longer intervals progressively inferior [4].
Notice these are weight-scaled human doses (ug/kg) and a fixed animal dose (ug), reported as experimental quantities. Fixed-microgram 'protocols' — the 100-300 ug figures that circulate for no-DAC Modified GRF 1-29 and for CJC-1295/ipamorelin pairings — are not derived from controlled human trials and are reported here only as context, not as guidance [12]. The DAC vs no-DAC page covers how the form changes the dosing interval.
Route, the studied compartment, and handling
The route studied is subcutaneous injection, the primary route in the human PK work [1][2]. Intravenous dosing appears only in early GRF(1-29) pharmacokinetic studies; oral bioavailability is negligible because CJC-1295 is a peptide and would be digested before absorption [1]. The studied compartment is the subcutaneous depot, from which the albumin-bound conjugate enters circulation.
In research handling, the lyophilized peptide is reconstituted with bacteriostatic water and refrigerated [1]. The four substitutions confer DPP-IV and protease resistance, and in the DAC variant the albumin conjugation confers the multi-day duration [3]. These handling facts are descriptions of laboratory practice in the cited studies, not instructions.
Half-life: the variable that sets the schedule
The half-life is the defining dosing variable, and it is entirely form-dependent. CJC-1295 DAC has an estimated half-life of 5.8-8.1 days in healthy adults, with IGF-1 elevation persisting up to 28 days after multiple doses [1]. The no-DAC Modified GRF 1-29 form is short-acting — minutes-to-hours — reflecting native GHRH(1-29) clearance with the protease-resistant substitutions.
That split is why a single 'CJC-1295 dosing' answer does not exist. A multi-day-half-life molecule and a minutes-to-hours molecule cannot share a schedule. The GHRH-knockout-mouse work makes the point concretely: once-daily 2-ug dosing of the long-acting analog normalized growth, while less frequent dosing was progressively inferior [4] — a schedule that only makes sense because the molecule persists. The form-by-form picture is detailed on the CJC-1295 half-life page.
Why 'protocol' doses are not research doses
It is worth being precise about why the circulating fixed-microgram figures are not interchangeable with the cited research doses. The published human doses are weight-scaled (30, 60, or 90 ug/kg) and were chosen to characterize pharmacokinetics — to map the GH and IGF-1 response curve — not to find a therapeutic dose [1][2]. The 100-300 ug fixed figures common in community discussion were not set by any controlled human trial; they circulate by convention, often without distinguishing the long-acting DAC form from the short-acting no-DAC form [12].
That conflation compounds the problem. A fixed dose attached to the wrong form would produce a completely different exposure, because the half-life differs by orders of magnitude [1]. And the material itself is a variable: CJC-1295 sold as a research chemical is unregulated for purity and identity, and the molecule has been found as an unlabeled ingredient in seized preparations identified only by LC-MS/MS [6]. None of that supports treating any circulating number as a dose.
What the clinical data do and do not cover
Human clinical data are limited. Phase 1 and early human PK studies in healthy volunteers established the GH/IGF-1 kinetics [1][2]. A Phase 2 trial in HIV-associated visceral obesity (NCT00267527) was discontinued, and the DAC development program did not advance. There are no large efficacy or long-term safety trials in healthy adults, and CJC-1295 is not approved for human use anywhere [12].
That is the boundary of the dosing evidence: a well-characterized pharmacokinetic profile from small studies, and an absence of the efficacy and safety dose-finding that an approved drug carries [12]. A dose that produces a measurable hormone response is not the same as a dose shown to be safe or effective for any outcome — and only the first of those exists for CJC-1295.