History and Devel­op­ment

CJC-1295 came out of a drug-delivery idea rather than a search for a new hormone. Its story runs from a Canadian lab in the early 2000s to doping labs a decade later.

The Albumin Idea

ConjuChem's scientists wanted to stretch the lifetime of short peptides by attaching them to albumin, which stays in the blood for weeks. Albumin has a free sulphur group on one of its building blocks, cysteine 34, that can react with a maleimide group. Fixing a maleimide to a peptide lets the two join after injection.

Picking a Winner in Rats

In 2005 the company reported in Endocrinology that it had made three such versions of GHRH(1-29). The best, CJC-1295, gave rats four times more growth hormone over two hours than the unmodified fragment and was still detectable in their blood after more than 72 hours.

First Studies in People

Two randomised, placebo-controlled trials in healthy adults aged 21 to 61 followed and were published in 2006. A single injection raised growth hormone for at least six days and IGF-I for up to eleven. A separate study at the University of Illinois examined how the pulse pattern of growth hormone changed.

A Trial That Ended Early

ConjuChem then registered a Phase 2 trial in people with HIV who had built up excess abdominal fat. It began in December 2005 with a planned 120 participants. The trial registry lists it as terminated, with a completion date of September 2006, and gives no reason. No regulator has ever approved the compound.

A Second Life Online

Peptides that never become medicines can still be copied by chemical suppliers. In 2009 Norwegian police and customs sent a product sold as CJC-1295 to a doping laboratory for analysis, and a 2016 study of internet forums described women using it for weight loss, muscle, skin and sleep. Anti-doping laboratories have since published several methods to detect it.