The Growth Hormone Stack: CJC-1295, Ipamorelin and MK-677
Three compounds sold as one system. I could find no study of any two of them together, and the confident version of each one rests on something that does not support it.
Who this is for
You are late thirties or forties. Your sleep is thinner than it was, a hard session costs you an extra day on the couch, and the body you had at thirty is not the one in the mirror. Somebody told you there is a fix. A clinic, a coach, a friend who knows a guy, a website with a white background.
This is not a protocol. This is what the human record actually contains.
What people actually run
Reporting, not recommending.
The pair is CJC-1295 with ipamorelin, injected under the skin, in cycles of roughly 8 to 16 weeks. For CJC-1295 the conventions are 1 to 2 mg a week for the DAC version, or 100 to 200 mcg once or twice daily for the no-DAC version. Ipamorelin runs 200 to 300 mcg per injection, one to three times a day. MK-677 is oral, 10 to 25 mg a day.
The reason given for combining them is that they hit different receptors, the brain's growth hormone releasing signal for CJC-1295 and the hunger signal ghrelin for ipamorelin, and should therefore add up. That last part is the claim, and there is no study behind it.
What each one is actually based on
| Compound | What the evidence is | What the gap is |
|---|---|---|
| CJC-1295 | Two versions, and vendors rarely distinguish them. The trials used the one with a chemical clip that binds it to a blood protein, which is why it lasts about a week. A 2026 review grades that version B. | What people buy for daily injection is that molecule with the clip removed. The same review grades it D, and the reason it gives for the D is no peer-reviewed human studies. Full entry here. |
| Ipamorelin | Two human trials, both in patients whose bowels would not restart after surgery. | The published one missed its endpoint and concluded there was no significant difference from placebo. The bigger one, 320 patients across 45 hospitals at up to twice the dose, finished in May 2014 and has never reported anything. And the selectivity claim it is sold on was measured in pigs. Full entry here. |
| MK-677 | Development never actually stopped. Merck's failed metabolic drug is now Lumos Pharma's LUM-201, in phase 3 in children since 20 May 2026, dosed by body weight at 1.6 mg per kg per day. The longest trial ran two years in 65 adults. | Adults take a flat 25 mg, which was the top dose in a 1996 study of 32 people aged 64 to 81 and has never been revisited. In the two year trial the increase in fat free mass did not translate into strength or function. Full entry here. |
I could find no study of the combination
Search the literature for CJC-1295 and ipamorelin together and you get nine results. Eight are review articles from 2026. The ninth is a 2013 methods paper on doping control in horses. Not one describes an experiment where both were given and something was measured, in any species. ClinicalTrials.gov has nothing.
The 2026 review says it outright: the pairing is used to increase pulsatile growth hormone release, and controlled evidence on synergy or body composition outcomes is limited.
Synergy here is not a finding. It is a diagram.
Why a lower dose is not the reassurance it sounds like
Everywhere else in this space the community dose runs above the studied dose. Here both injectables run below it.
Ipamorelin's daily total is 5 to 21 times below what the published trial used. One to 2 mg a week of clipped CJC-1295 is a quarter to a half of what the pivotal trial gave in a single shot. For the unclipped version there is nothing to compare against.
A dose below the studied range is still a dose I could find no study of. The reason no one has measured what 1 mg a week does is that it sits under the bottom of the curve, not that it landed on the safe side of it.
Ipamorelin has an extra wrinkle: every published human dose went into a vein, and everyone injects under the skin. So it is a smaller number in a unit with no published conversion.
Duration runs the other way and is easier to miss. The trials were 28 and 49 days. People run 8 to 16 weeks. Past 49 days I could find no published human safety data for the clipped version, and none at all for the other one.
The honest read
Think of it as three references for the same job candidate.
The first is glowing and is describing somebody else, the version with the clip.
The second never came back. Somebody followed 320 people for three years and the answer has been sitting somewhere private since 2014.
The third is the longest and most thorough, and what it says is that after two years the candidate was no stronger.
Now hold that against what you were sold.
Body composition and strength. No human trial of CJC-1295 or ipamorelin measured either.
Sleep. The entire human sleep record for MK-677 is a 1997 study in 14 people with no placebo, and the older group of 6 had no control at all.
Recovery. MK-677 missed its functional endpoints in both hip fracture trials.
MK-677 is the instructive one, because it does not fail to move the biomarker. It raises IGF-1, the growth signal the liver puts out, reliably across six populations and three decades. Then each trial measures the thing it actually cares about and finds nothing. Ipamorelin has never had IGF-1 reported in a human at all.
None of this proves the drugs do nothing. Nobody has shown that either. It means the confident version is not what the evidence says.
If you are going to do this anyway
This is the part I actually care about, because it is what gets people hurt, and it has almost nothing to do with the compounds themselves.
What to check before you buy
Ask which version of CJC-1295 it is, then check the molecular weight on the report
The two are different molecules and the number will say so. Vendors rarely distinguish them, so the certificate is where the question gets settled.
On an ipamorelin certificate, look for m/z 712.4, not 769.4
Two independent labs testing illicit ipamorelin found Gly-ipamorelin, ipamorelin with an extra amino acid stuck on the front. It weighs something different, and real ipamorelin is 711.9. Neither lab was auditing labels, so this says nothing about what fraction of vials are affected, and nothing has been published about how the altered version behaves.
Identification by mass spectrometry, purity by chromatography, and content
The same three things on any certificate. Content is a separate measurement from purity, and it is the one most people skip.
Ask for the same certificate on an oral
One analysis of 44 products sold online as SARMs found only 18 contained the labelled compound at the labelled dose, with ibutamoren turning up as a contaminant in some of the others.
Do the water-to-peptide arithmetic before you draw anything
Get the ratio wrong and a careful dose becomes ten times what you meant. The syringe markings do not mean what most people think.
Two real certificates, read line by line, are worked through here. The dilution arithmetic gets its own piece.
What would make you stop is mostly MK-677, because it is the one with real human trials, and the conversation starts with glucose.
What would make you stop
Glucose
Fasting glucose rose significantly in the 1996 study and in the two year trial, and insulin sensitivity fell over that same period. Two of the investigators later characterised it as a mild impairment in insulin sensitivity at one year with no clinically significant change in HbA1c, which is a real qualification and worth holding.
A clean fasting panel is reassurance from a test that understates the problem
The study in obese men found no difference in fasting glucose or insulin, but did find abnormal glucose tolerance at two and eight weeks.
Swelling and appetite
The next most common reasons people quit the two year trial. The appetite increase and the swelling both settled within a few months.
Congestive heart failure
A trial in 123 elderly hip fracture patients at 25 mg a day stopped early over congestive heart failure concerns, and the authors called the safety profile unfavourable. That much is in the paper. The case count is not: the abstract says a small number of patients, the full text is paywalled, and FDA's link to the study returns a 404.
The other hip fracture trial had excluded anyone with congestive heart failure, diabetes, cancer or uncontrolled hypertension, so its cleaner safety record describes a screened population.
All three are banned by WADA at all times, in and out of competition, under S2.
My take
With BPC-157 the problem is that nobody did the work. That is not the problem here, and it is what makes this stack worth writing about.
Somebody did the work three times over. ConjuChem built a novel molecule and tested it in people against placebo, twice. Helsinn ran two ipamorelin trials across more than sixty hospitals. MK-677 has been through randomised trials for three decades and is in phase 3 right now.
What bothers me is not an absence. It is what is actually there behind each claim. A trial that missed its endpoint. A trial that finished in 2014 and never spoke. A weight-based dosing algorithm for children sitting next to a flat adult number that came from watching 32 people in their sixties and seventies in 1996.
If these compounds do something, it will be the people paying for them who find out, and right now those people are deciding in the dark.
If a clinic or a coach put you on CJC-1295 with ipamorelin, ask them what the two do together that neither does alone, and tell me what they said.
Frequently asked
Has anyone studied CJC-1295 and ipamorelin together?
Search the literature for the two together and you get nine results. Eight are review articles from 2026 and the ninth is a 2013 methods paper on doping control in horses. Not one describes an experiment where both were given and something was measured, in any species. ClinicalTrials.gov has nothing.
Why does it matter which version of CJC-1295 it is?
The one used in the trials carries a chemical clip that binds it to a blood protein. What is sold for daily injection is that molecule with the clip removed. A 2026 review grades the clipped version B and the unclipped version D, and the reason it gives for the D is no peer-reviewed human studies. Vendors rarely distinguish them, but the molecular weight on a certificate will.
What happened to the second ipamorelin trial?
It has never reported. Both ipamorelin trials were in patients whose bowels would not restart after surgery. The published one missed its endpoint and concluded there was no significant difference from placebo. The larger one enrolled 320 patients across 45 hospitals at up to twice the dose, finished in May 2014, and nothing has come out of it since.
What did the MK-677 trials find on body composition and strength?
The longest trial ran two years in 65 adults and found about a kilogram of fat free mass with no change in strength or function. It missed its functional endpoints in both hip fracture trials. MK-677 raises IGF-1 reliably, across six populations and three decades, and then each trial measures the thing it cares about and finds nothing.
Is a dose below the studied range safer?
A dose below the studied range is still a dose I could find no study of. The ipamorelin conventions that circulate run 5 to 21 times below the daily total the published trial used, and every published human dose went into a vein while people inject under the skin, so it is a smaller number in a unit with no published conversion. Duration runs the other way: the trials were 28 and 49 days and the cycles that circulate run 8 to 16 weeks.
Are these banned in sport?
All three are banned by WADA at all times, in and out of competition, under S2.
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.
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