SARMs

RAD-140

Real trials, all of them in cancer patients

7 sections

Top of article
What it actually is
What it is supposed to do
What people take it for
The dose question
How to check you have the right molecule
What people get wrong
What is known about harm

What circulates: 20 to 30 mg a day for men, on an eight week cycle
What was studied: 50 to 150 mg a day, with 100 mg set as the maximum tolerated
The gap: Convention runs below the studied dose
How long it lasts: I could not find a published human half life. The completed phase 1 established a maximum tolerated dose rather than a pharmacokinetic profile in the material the class page research reached.

What it actually is

RAD-140, also called testolone and vosilasarm, is a non-steroidal compound built to act on the androgen receptor, the switch testosterone works through, without being a steroid. Of the eleven compounds sold as SARMs it has the second largest human record, and all of it is in cancer patients rather than in healthy people. It holds no medicines approval anywhere the searches behind the class page looked.

What it is supposed to do

It binds the androgen receptor and acts on it selectively, which is the whole premise of the compound class: keep the muscle building and drop the effects on the prostate and elsewhere. How well that separation holds in a person is not established here, because the only completed trial measured tumour response and safety rather than body composition.

What people take it for

Muscle gain and strength. What it has actually been given for is metastatic breast cancer, in a phase 1 whose purpose was to find the highest tolerable dose.

The dose question

What circulates: 20 to 30 mg a day for men, on an eight week cycle
What was studied: 50 to 150 mg a day, with 100 mg set as the maximum tolerated; A completed phase 1 in women with metastatic breast cancer

Below the studied dose

This one runs the opposite way to the rest of the shelf: what circulates sits below what was studied rather than above it. The completed trial gave 50 mg a day to six patients, 100 mg to thirteen and 150 mg to three, and set the maximum tolerated dose at 100 mg. The page publishing the 20 to 30 mg figure cites no human study for it. Sitting under a studied dose is not a safety finding, because that trial was in women with metastatic breast cancer taking it under supervision, and it raised one liver enzyme in 59.1 percent of them.

Reported because it is what people use. Nothing here recommends any amount.

How long it lasts

I could not find a published human half life. The completed phase 1 established a maximum tolerated dose rather than a pharmacokinetic profile in the material the class page research reached.

Route studied

By mouth, daily, at 50, 100 or 150 mg, in women with metastatic breast cancer. A second study is recruiting under the code EP0062, and that registry record never names RAD-140, so the identity link runs through a chemical database synonym list.

Route used

By mouth, at 20 to 30 mg a day on an eight week cycle, reported as convention and not as a recommendation.

How to check you have the right molecule

One PubChem record carries RAD140, RAD-140, testolone and vosilasarm together, so the names are one compound. The check worth doing is on the bottle rather than the name: in the 2016 product analysis, of three products sold as RAD140, one returned a formula match for it, one contained ostarine with a trace of andarine instead, and one contained nothing the laboratory could detect.

Walked through on two real certificates in how to read a certificate of analysis.

What people get wrong

The trap here is the direction of the dose gap. Almost everything else in this reference is sold above what was studied; this is sold below it. That is not reassurance. The studied doses were given to people with metastatic cancer under supervision, with blood tests, and the trial still raised liver enzymes in most of them.

What is known about harm

This is where the compound's own trial is more informative than any case report. In the completed phase 1, one liver enzyme rose in 59.1 percent of patients and another in 45.5 percent. Outside the trials, four published liver injury case reports were opened for the class page, including a 24 year old man who reached a bilirubin about thirty times the top of normal after five weeks and whose liver tests had not returned to normal thirteen weeks after stopping. Two cardiac case reports also name it, one of them in a 16 year old after a single dose.

Others in SARMs

Everything on this page is a summary. The citations, the studies and the reasoning live in the full entry.

Read the full entry on RAD-140

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