CJC-1295: There Are Two Versions, and All the Research Is for One of Them
The human trials tested a peptide chemically clipped to a blood protein. Strip that clip off, which is what most vendors sell, and there is not one peer-reviewed human study left.
What it is
CJC-1295 is a copy of growth hormone releasing hormone with one end modified so it grabs onto albumin, the most common protein in your blood, and rides around attached to it. The modification is a maleimidopropionamide group on the C terminal. (PMID 15817669)
DAC stands for drug affinity complex. It is the reason the molecule exists.
Albumin sticks around for weeks. Bolt a peptide to it and the peptide sticks around too. It is a hitchhiker's thumb. Take the DAC off and you have not made a cheaper version of the same thing, you have made a passenger with no ride.
In the rat work the clipped peptide was still in plasma past 72 hours, still bound to albumin from 15 minutes after injection out to at least 24 hours. (PMID 15817669)
And "CJC-1295 without DAC" is a naming mistake that stuck. I could not find any source, including the developer's own papers, using the name CJC-1295 for the unmodified peptide. That unmodified fragment already has a name, sermorelin. Three molecules, two names, everybody confused.
What the trials found
Three studies. All DAC. All measuring hormones in blood, growth hormone and IGF-1, insulin like growth factor 1, the growth signal the liver puts out when growth hormone reaches it.
Teichman 2006 is the one everything rests on. Two randomised, placebo controlled, double blind ascending dose trials, 28 and 49 days, healthy young to middle aged adults, injected under the skin. A single shot raised growth hormone 2 to 10 fold and IGF-1 1.5 to 3 fold, with growth hormone elevated six days or more and IGF-1 for 9 to 11. Half life came out at 5.8 to 8.1 days. Best tolerated dose was 30 to 60 mcg/kg. (PMID 16352683)
Those are the numbers on every vendor page, and they are real published numbers.
Ionescu and Frohman 2006 gave single 60 or 90 mcg/kg shots to healthy men and sampled every 20 minutes across 12 overnight hours a week later. Baseline growth hormone up 7.5 fold, mean up 46 percent, IGF-1 similar, pulse frequency and size unchanged. (PMID 17018654)
Buried in the discussion: 90 mcg/kg did nothing 60 did not already do.
Sackmann-Sala 2009 looked at which blood proteins moved a week after one injection, in 11 men. A biomarker study, not an efficacy one, and it does not report the dose or route. (PMID 19386527)
That is the entire published human record.
A fourth trial exists and never reported. NCT00267527, a multicentre placebo controlled trial of CJC-1295 in HIV patients with visceral obesity, sponsored by ConjuChem. 120 patients, 12 weeks, started December 2005, terminated with no results posted and no paper I could find. I pulled the raw registry entry to check it against the cluster of fabricated peptide registrations under the sponsor name Hudson Biotech, and it is nothing to do with them. ConjuChem is the legitimate developer of this molecule. This looks like an ordinary trial that stopped early and never published.
The version people actually inject
Now the gap this entry is about. That 2026 review graded DAC a B and no-DAC a D, and the reason given for the D is no peer-reviewed human studies. (PMID 42395176)
I checked. PubMed returns 32 results for CJC-1295: the rat conjugate study, a knockout mouse study, the three human papers above, about 20 doping control papers, one study of online forums, and eight review articles from 2026. No human study of the DAC free version is in there.
No efficacy, no safety, nothing. Not weak evidence. No evidence.
So when a vendor quotes Teichman on a page selling the no-DAC version, they are borrowing results from a molecule they are not shipping you. The lower dose might make that safer. Nobody has checked that either.
How it compares
These are the peptides sold beside it, and the numbers get passed between them.
| Approved? | Human trials behind it | What that evidence covers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CJC-1295 | No | Three, all of the version with a chemical clip attached | Hormone levels, not body composition |
| Tesamorelin | Yes, since 2010, for one use | Two large randomised trials, 806 people | Deep belly fat in adults with HIV |
| Sermorelin | Twice, both withdrawn in 2009 | Randomised trials in children, one uncontrolled study in 11 men | A pituitary test, and how fast children grew |
| Ipamorelin | No | Two registered, one published and one that never reported | Bowel function after surgery |
Read the last column. None of that evidence is about body composition in a healthy adult, and none of it transfers between the rows.
Where the dose came from
The conventions, as written down in the review rather than pulled from the air, are 1 to 2 mg a week for DAC in one or two shots, and 100 to 200 mcg once or twice daily for no-DAC. (PMID 42395176)
Put that against Teichman. His best tolerated dose was 30 to 60 mcg/kg, which for a 75 kg man is 2.25 to 4.5 mg in a single injection. The community's entire weekly dose is a quarter to a half of one studied shot.
That is the reverse of BPC-157, where the community number sits above everything the research supports. Here it sits well below. Lower is not automatically safer when I could find no study of the lower number either.
For the no-DAC version there is nothing to compare against at all.
One paper actually studied where these numbers come from, rather than repeating them: a netnographic study of 23 threads across nine bodybuilding forums where women using CJC-1295 work out doses between themselves. What it describes is folk pharmacology, and the participants are openly unsure how their own bodies are responding. (PMID 26771670)
What could go wrong
CJC-1295 is nearly always sold with ipamorelin, on the logic that they hit different receptors and both end at growth hormone. That part is true. Ipamorelin works on the ghrelin receptor, CJC-1295 on the GHRH receptor. Search PubMed for both names and you get 9 results. Eight are 2026 review articles. The ninth is a 2013 horse doping paper. No original study in any species tested the combination, and ClinicalTrials.gov has nothing. That same 2026 review says it plainly: the pairing is used to increase pulsatile growth hormone release, and controlled evidence on synergy or body composition outcomes is lacking.
The safety record is short. Teichman reported no serious adverse events across 28 and 49 days. People run 8 to 16 week cycles. Past 49 days there is nothing, and for no-DAC there is nothing at all.
WADA. Both banned at all times, in and out of competition, under S2. CJC-1295 is named as a GHRH analogue alongside sermorelin and tesamorelin; ipamorelin is named as a secretagogue alongside ibutamoren and anamorelin.
FDA. Neither is approved in any form, and neither is on the 503A Bulks List.
Both went into Category 2 of the interim compounding list in September 2023, the bucket for significant safety concerns, and came out in September 2024. The reason gets misread constantly: the nominators withdrew their nominations. Nothing was decided on the merits. In December 2024 the advisory committee voted against adding CJC-1295 to the 503A Bulks List, covering the free base, the acetate and the DAC version together. The ipamorelin vote in October 2024 went the same way, 0 for and 12 against with one abstention.
Neither was ever in Category 1. Leaving Category 2 made nothing legal.
FDA has also named it in a warning letter to a single compounding pharmacy in 2020, and the spelling is why that gets missed: the letter writes it "CJC 1295" with no hyphen. It went to one pharmacy about its own compounding, and it turns on eligibility for a statutory exemption rather than on safety or on whether the thing works.
What nobody knows
Whether it changes anything you can see. No human study of either version measured body composition, strength or sleep. Every body composition claim is inferred from growth hormone and IGF-1 going up, which is a step in a chain, not the outcome.
Whether more helps. The one study that compared two doses found no difference between them.
My take
The interesting part of this entry is that the evidence exists at all.
Somebody did the work. ConjuChem built a clever molecule that clips to albumin so you inject once a week instead of daily, then tested it in humans under proper placebo controlled conditions.
Then the reputation travelled and the molecule did not. The clip came off, the price dropped, and the citations stayed exactly where they were.
If you are using this, the question for your vendor is not about purity. It is whether the vial holds the version with the DAC or the version without. Those are two different drugs with different half lives and different safety records, and the certificate of analysis will tell you which one you have if you read the fine print.
What I want to know is how many of you were ever told there were two versions.
Frequently asked
Is CJC-1295 FDA approved?
Neither version is approved in any form, and neither is on the 503A Bulks List. Both went into Category 2 of the FDA interim compounding list in September 2023, the bucket for significant safety concerns, and came out in September 2024 because the nominators withdrew their nominations, not because anything was decided on the merits. WADA bans it at all times, in and out of competition, under S2.
What is the difference between CJC-1295 with DAC and CJC-1295 no DAC?
The DAC, short for drug affinity complex, is a maleimidopropionamide group on the C terminal that latches onto albumin, the most common protein in the blood, so the peptide rides around attached to it. That is why Teichman 2006 measured a half life of 5.8 to 8.1 days. All three published human studies used the DAC version. The version sold without it is that same peptide with the clip cut off, and the unmodified fragment already has a name, sermorelin.
Does CJC-1295 actually build muscle or burn fat?
No human study of either version has measured body composition, lean mass, strength, sleep or tendon healing. Teichman 2006 reported growth hormone up 2 to 10 fold and IGF-1 up 1.5 to 3 fold from a single injection of the DAC version. Every body composition claim is inferred from those two numbers going up, which is a step in a chain rather than the outcome. The one trial designed to measure an outcome in patients, NCT00267527, was terminated and never reported.
Where did the standard CJC-1295 dose come from?
Not from the trials. The conventions, as written down in the 2026 review rather than pulled from the air, are 1 to 2 mg a week for the DAC version in one or two shots, and 100 to 200 mcg once or twice daily for the version without it. Teichman's best tolerated dose was 30 to 60 mcg/kg, which for a 75 kg man is 2.25 to 4.5 mg in a single injection, so the entire weekly community figure is a quarter to a half of one studied shot.
Is CJC-1295 safe to use long term?
Teichman 2006 reported no serious adverse events across trials of 28 and 49 days, and that is where the published record ends. Past 49 days there is nothing, and people run 8 to 16 week cycles. For the version without the DAC I could not find a human study of any kind, safety included.
Why do people stack CJC-1295 with ipamorelin?
The logic given is that the two hit different receptors and both end at growth hormone, and that part is true. Ipamorelin works on the ghrelin receptor, CJC-1295 on the GHRH receptor. A PubMed search for both names returns 9 results, eight of them 2026 review articles and the ninth a 2013 horse doping paper. No original study in any species tested the combination, and ClinicalTrials.gov has nothing.
This content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Peptides discussed are research compounds and may not be approved for human use. Nothing here should be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting any peptide, supplement, or protocol. Individual responses vary. Do not self-administer compounds without proper medical supervision.
Trials cited
- NCT00267527
A Study to Evaluate CJC 1295 in HIV Patients With Visceral Obesity
Terminated, ConjuChem, first posted 21 December 2005.
Registry details are from ClinicalTrials.gov, the United States government trial registry, as it read on 14 September 2026.
Get the next one in your inbox
Free. One email a week at most. Unsubscribe in one click.
Double opt-in · No spam · Unsubscribe anytime
Comments
More in Growth hormone
- PEG-MGF Is a Tag on a Peptide a 2010 Review Said Nobody Had IsolatedI found no published study giving it to a person, and none giving it to a live animal of any species, and the 25 percent growth figure that sells it came from injecting a gene.
- Follistatin-344 Names a Gene, and Every Positive Result I Found Under That Name Came From Delivering OneThe protein a cell makes from that gene is 315 amino acids long and carries no manufacturing tag, and when two anti doping laboratories opened seventeen vials sold under the name, eight held no follistatin at all.
- IGF-1 LR3: The Downstream Signal, Injected, and Never Studied in a PersonSold on a 20 to 30 hour half-life, and cleared out of a virgin rat about eleven times faster than the hormone it copies.