CJC-1295 with DAC is a synthetic, long-acting analog of growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH), the hypothalamic hormone that tells the pituitary gland to release growth hormone (GH). It was designed by the Montreal company ConjuChem, which took the active 29-amino-acid fragment of GHRH, changed four of its amino acids, and added a reactive chemical group, the drug affinity complex (DAC), that bonds the peptide to albumin in the blood after injection (Jetté et al., Endocrinology 2005). This is the molecule the original literature simply called “CJC-1295.”
Bonding to albumin is what sets this version apart. In healthy adults, a single subcutaneous injection raised GH and IGF-I (insulin-like growth factor I, the hormone GH drives the liver to make) for one to two weeks, and the estimated half-life was 5.8–8.1 days (Teichman et al., JCEM 2006). The version sold as “no DAC” lacks the albumin-binding group and is covered separately at CJC-1295 no DAC.
The single most important fact: unlike its no-DAC sibling, this conjugate was tested in people, but only in small, short early-phase studies in healthy volunteers. It was never approved by FDA or EMA, no efficacy trial in any disease or in body composition has been published, and FDA has flagged CJC-1295 as a compounding safety risk.
This page summarizes what the early clinical studies, the doping-control literature and regulators report. It is for education only and is not medical advice.
| Property | Detail |
|---|---|
| Class | Synthetic GHRH analog bonded to albumin (drug affinity complex) |
| Other names | CJC-1295 DAC, DAC-GRF; the original “CJC-1295” of the developer’s papers |
| Developer | ConjuChem (Montreal); never marketed |
| Mechanism | Binds the GHRH receptor on pituitary somatotroph cells, which then release GH; IGF-I rises downstream |
| Route in trials | Subcutaneous injection |
| Doses studied in humans | Four ascending single doses, then two or three weekly or every-other-week doses; 60 or 90 µg/kg in the pulsatility study |
| Half-life | Estimated 5.8–8.1 days in healthy adults (Teichman et al., 2006) |
| Human evidence | Phase I-type studies in healthy volunteers only; no controlled efficacy data |
| US status | Not approved; not a controlled substance; listed by FDA among bulk substances that may present significant safety risks (nomination later withdrawn) |
| WADA status | Prohibited at all times under S2.2.4, GHRH and its analogues |
What it is
Natural human GHRH is 44 amino acids long, but nearly all of its activity sits in the first 29. That fragment, sermorelin, is short-lived because the blood enzyme dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV) cuts off its first two amino acids and the kidney filters it out within minutes (Frohman et al., J Clin Invest 1986; Esposito et al., Adv Drug Deliv Rev 2003). CJC-1295 with DAC addresses both problems in two steps.
The structural changes, in words
- Four amino acid substitutions. Compared with the 29-residue fragment, the second amino acid is replaced by D-alanine (the mirror-image form of alanine), the 8th by glutamine, the 15th by alanine and the 27th by leucine (Knoop et al., Anal Bioanal Chem 2016). The position-2 change blocks the DPP-IV cut. This four-substitution peptide is the same backbone sold as “no DAC” or “modified GRF (1-29).”
- An added lysine carrying a maleimide group. At the end of the chain, the developer attached an extra lysine bearing a 3-maleimidopropionamide group (Jetté et al., 2005). That makes the molecule 30 amino acids long (Timms et al., Drug Test Anal 2019).
- Bonding to albumin after injection. The maleimide group reacts with a free thiol (sulfur) group on circulating albumin, specifically the cysteine at position 34, forming a covalent bond (Jetté et al., 2005). Bound to a large, long-lived carrier protein, the peptide escapes rapid kidney filtration.
How the DAC version was selected
ConjuChem made three maleimide derivatives of GRF(1-29) and tested them in rats. All three, when bonded to human albumin, resisted DPP-IV in vitro and stimulated GH release from cultured rat pituitary cells. The best of them, CJC-1295, produced a 4-fold larger GH area under the curve over 2 hours than unmodified GRF(1-29) after subcutaneous injection in rats, and it remained in plasma beyond 72 hours. In rat plasma, an albumin-bound form appeared within 15 minutes and was still circulating beyond 24 hours (Jetté et al., 2005). These were rat data.
How it compares with its relatives
| Name | Albumin binding | Human half-life | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| CJC-1295 with DAC (this page) | Yes, covalent bond to albumin | Estimated 5.8–8.1 days | Never approved |
| CJC-1295 no DAC and MOD-GRF (1-29) | No; same four-substitution backbone without the lysine-maleimide group | Not measured in humans | Never approved; no published human study |
| Sermorelin | No; unmodified GHRH(1-29) | Minutes | FDA-approved as Geref (NDA 020443); discontinued |
| Tesamorelin | No; full GHRH(1-44) with a fatty-acid group | Dosed once daily in trials | FDA-approved as Egrifta (2010) |
Sources for the comparison rows: Teichman et al., 2006; Dominikowski et al., Front Endocrinol 2026; Drugs@FDA, Geref; Drugs@FDA, Egrifta.
Pharmacokinetics
The only human pharmacokinetic data come from two randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind ascending-dose trials in healthy adults aged 21–61, lasting 28 and 49 days. The first gave one of four ascending single doses; the second gave two or three doses at weekly or every-other-week intervals, all by subcutaneous injection (Teichman et al., 2006).
| Measure | Result in healthy adults |
|---|---|
| Estimated half-life | 5.8–8.1 days |
| Mean plasma GH after one injection | Raised 2- to 10-fold, dose-dependently, for 6 days or more |
| Mean plasma IGF-I after one injection | Raised 1.5- to 3-fold for 9–11 days |
| IGF-I after multiple doses | Remained above baseline for up to 28 days; evidence of a cumulative effect |
Source: Teichman et al., 2006.
For comparison, the unconjugated GHRH(1-29) fragment has a plasma half-life in humans of about 10–20 minutes (Esposito et al., 2003). The roughly week-long half-life is a property of the albumin-bound conjugate, not of the peptide backbone alone.
What the research shows
GH and IGF-I in healthy adults
The ascending-dose trials above showed sustained, dose-dependent rises in GH and IGF-I. The authors concluded that the drug was safe and relatively well tolerated, “particularly at doses of 30 or 60 microg/kg,” and that the data supported its potential as a therapeutic agent (Teichman et al., 2006). The published abstract does not report body composition, strength or other clinical outcomes, and none of the participants had a disease being treated.
GH pulsatility
Natural GH is released in pulses, and a common concern with a continuously acting stimulus is that it might flatten them. Ionescu and Frohman tested this in healthy men aged 20–40, drawing blood every 20 minutes over a 12-hour night before and one week after a single injection of 60 or 90 µg/kg (Ionescu and Frohman, JCEM 2006).
| Outcome, one week after injection | Change | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Trough (basal) GH | ≈7.5-fold increase | p under 0.0001 |
| Mean GH | +46% | p under 0.01 |
| IGF-I | +45% | p under 0.001 |
| Frequency and size of GH pulses | Unchanged | Not significant |
| 60 vs 90 µg/kg | No significant difference | — |
The extra GH came mainly from higher baseline levels between pulses rather than from bigger or more frequent pulses, and the rise in IGF-I did not correlate with any single GH secretion measure (Ionescu and Frohman, 2006).
A follow-up analysis of stored serum from 11 of these men, aged 20–34, compared blood proteins before and one week after a single 60–90 µg/kg injection. Five protein spots changed, including isoforms of apolipoprotein A1 and transthyretin (lower) and beta-hemoglobin and albumin fragments (higher); the authors proposed them only as candidate biomarkers of GH action (Sackmann-Sala et al., Growth Horm IGF Res 2009).
Growth in GHRH-deficient mice
In mice bred without the GHRH gene, 1-week-old animals were given 2 µg of CJC-1295 every 24, 48 or 72 hours for 5 weeks. Daily dosing produced normal body weight and length; every-48- or 72-hour dosing improved growth over placebo but did not fully normalize it. Treated mice showed signs of pituitary somatotroph proliferation (Alba et al., Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2006). These results are in mice and do not establish any effect or dosing interval in people.
What has not been shown
No published randomized trial tests CJC-1295 with DAC for GH deficiency, muscle mass, fat loss, recovery or athletic performance. A 2026 review graded its evidence as phase I pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies in healthy adults with “no controlled efficacy data” (Dominikowski et al., 2026). No later-stage trial results have been published, and the compound never reached approval.
On “it keeps GH pulses natural.” The pulsatility study did find pulse frequency and size preserved, but it measured one night, one week after one injection, in young healthy men. It did not test repeated dosing, long-term exposure or any clinical outcome. It is also the only such study; no human trial compares pulsatility between the DAC and no-DAC versions.
Side effects and risks
What the trials reported
The two ascending-dose trials reported no serious adverse reactions, and the authors described the drug as relatively well tolerated, particularly at 30 or 60 µg/kg (Teichman et al., 2006). A 2026 review summarized these studies as showing mild local and systemic effects related to GH-axis stimulation (Dominikowski et al., 2026). These were short studies in small numbers of healthy volunteers, so they cannot detect uncommon or long-term harms.
What FDA has said
FDA placed CJC-1295 in category 2 of its bulk drug substances review, the list of substances that “may present significant safety risks” when used in compounded drugs. FDA cited risk of immunogenicity (antibody formation) by certain routes, complexity around peptide-related impurities and characterization of the active ingredient, limited clinical data, and serious adverse events it identified with CJC-1295, including increased heart rate and a systemic vasodilatory reaction (widening of blood vessels throughout the body) (FDA bulk drug substances, category 2). The nomination was later withdrawn by the nominator, so CJC-1295 now sits in FDA’s table of withdrawn nominations. No FDA-approved product containing it exists.
Risks specific to a long-acting conjugate
- It cannot be switched off quickly. With a half-life of roughly a week, GH and IGF-I stayed elevated for 6–11 days after a single injection, and repeated doses had a cumulative effect on IGF-I (Teichman et al., 2006). If an adverse effect occurs, exposure persists for days.
- Sustained IGF-I elevation. Chronic IGF-I elevation is the central long-term concern across GH-axis peptides. The 2026 review flags mitogenic GH/IGF-I signaling as a theoretical cancer concern while noting no established clinical carcinogenic signal (Dominikowski et al., 2026).
- Glucose tolerance. GH opposes insulin. In a trial of a different long-acting GHRH (a polyethylene glycol conjugate) in healthy elderly subjects, repeated dosing produced some impairment of glucose tolerance (Munafo et al., Eur J Endocrinol 2005). That is a different molecule, but the mechanism is shared.
- No long-term data. The longest published human study lasted 49 days.
Product quality and identity
Products sold under the CJC-1295 name are not made to pharmaceutical standards, and the label does not guarantee the contents. A vial seized in Norway in 2009 and sold as “CJC-1295” contained a 29-amino-acid amidated peptide, the no-DAC backbone, not the albumin-binding conjugate (Henninge et al., Drug Test Anal 2010). Danish customs seizures of GH-secretagogue peptides, including modified GRF 1-29, all carried an extra glycine at one end compared with reference standards (Gajda et al., Drug Test Anal 2019). See the no-DAC page for more on product analyses.
Legal and anti-doping status
In the US, CJC-1295 is not a controlled substance; the anabolic steroid schedule in 21 CFR 1308.13 does not name GHRH analogs. It is an unapproved drug, and FDA has flagged it as a compounding safety risk.
The WADA 2026 Prohibited List prohibits growth hormone releasing factors at all times under section S2.2.4, naming GHRH and its analogues with CJC-1295 as an example alongside CJC-1293, sermorelin and tesamorelin.
The DAC is also a detection problem. Once bonded to albumin and other plasma proteins, the drug behaves like a large protein of no fixed molecular weight, which defeats standard mass-spectrometry screens for intact peptides (Timms et al., Drug Test Anal 2019). Laboratories have responded with targeted methods:
- An antibody-based immuno-PCR screen detected the protein conjugate down to 0.8 pg/mL; in horse plasma a screening threshold of 50 pg/mL was needed because of the horse’s own GHRH (Timms et al., 2019a).
- A confirmation method using antibody capture and enzymatic digestion identified CJC-1295 down to 180 pg/mL in 1 mL of horse plasma (Timms et al., 2019b).
- A urine method covering CJC-1295 with and without DAC, built on in vitro metabolites, reached detection limits generally at or below WADA’s 1 ng/mL required performance limit (Memdouh et al., Drug Test Anal 2021).
The two horse-plasma methods were developed for racing control, not human testing.
Key takeaways
- The DAC is an albumin anchor. The same four-substitution GHRH(1-29) backbone as the no-DAC peptide, plus an added lysine with a maleimide group that bonds covalently to albumin after injection.
- Week-long action in humans. In healthy adults, one injection raised GH 2- to 10-fold for 6 days or more and IGF-I 1.5- to 3-fold for 9–11 days, with an estimated half-life of 5.8–8.1 days.
- Pulses were preserved, in one short study. One week after a single injection, trough GH rose about 7.5-fold and IGF-I 45%, while GH pulse frequency and size were unchanged.
- Early-phase data only. Human studies were small, short and in healthy volunteers. No efficacy trial for any disease, body composition or performance has been published, and the drug was never approved.
- FDA has flagged it. FDA cited limited clinical data and serious adverse events including increased heart rate and a systemic vasodilatory reaction.
- Banned in sport, and harder to detect. Prohibited at all times under WADA S2.2.4; albumin binding complicates detection, which has prompted dedicated antibody-based methods.
Sources
- Jetté L, Léger R, Thibaudeau K, et al. Human growth hormone-releasing factor (hGRF)1-29-albumin bioconjugates activate the GRF receptor on the anterior pituitary in rats: identification of CJC-1295 as a long-lasting GRF analog. Endocrinology. 2005;146(7):3052–3058. PubMed.
- Teichman SL, Neale A, Lawrence B, Gagnon C, Castaigne JP, Frohman LA. Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2006;91(3):799–805. PubMed.
- Ionescu M, Frohman LA. Pulsatile secretion of growth hormone (GH) persists during continuous stimulation by CJC-1295, a long-acting GH-releasing hormone analog. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2006;91(12):4792–4797. PubMed.
- Sackmann-Sala L, Ding J, Frohman LA, Kopchick JJ. Activation of the GH/IGF-1 axis by CJC-1295, a long-acting GHRH analog, results in serum protein profile changes in normal adult subjects. Growth Horm IGF Res. 2009;19(6):471–477. PubMed; PMC.
- Alba M, Fintini D, Sagazio A, et al. Once-daily administration of CJC-1295, a long-acting growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) analog, normalizes growth in the GHRH knockout mouse. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2006;291(6):E1290–E1294. PubMed.
- Dominikowski A, Rękoś Z, Olejarz M, Szczepanek-Parulska E, et al. The emerging landscape of performance-enhancing peptides modulating GH-IGF1 axis: bridging the gap between clinical evidence and patient self-administration. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2026;17:1822475. PubMed.
- Knoop A, Thomas A, Fichant E, Delahaut P, et al. Qualitative identification of growth hormone-releasing hormones in human plasma by means of immunoaffinity purification and LC-HRMS/MS. Anal Bioanal Chem. 2016;408(12):3145–3153. PubMed; PMC.
- Frohman LA, Downs TR, Williams TC, Heimer EP, et al. Rapid enzymatic degradation of growth hormone-releasing hormone by plasma in vitro and in vivo to a biologically inactive product cleaved at the NH2 terminus. J Clin Invest. 1986;78(4):906–913. PubMed.
- Esposito P, Barbero L, Caccia P, et al. PEGylation of growth hormone-releasing hormone (GRF) analogues. Adv Drug Deliv Rev. 2003;55(10):1279–1291. PubMed.
- Munafo A, Nguyen TX, Papasouliotis O, Lécuelle H, Priestley A, Thorner MO. Polyethylene glycol-conjugated growth hormone-releasing hormone is long acting and stimulates GH in healthy young and elderly subjects. Eur J Endocrinol. 2005;153(2):249–256. PubMed.
- Henninge J, Pepaj M, Hullstein I, Hemmersbach P. Identification of CJC-1295, a growth-hormone-releasing peptide, in an unknown pharmaceutical preparation. Drug Test Anal. 2010;2(11–12):647–650. PubMed.
- Gajda PM, Holm NB, Hoej LJ, Rasmussen BS, et al. Glycine-modified growth hormone secretagogues identified in seized doping material. Drug Test Anal. 2019;11(2):350–354. PubMed.
- Timms M, Ganio K, Forbes G, Bailey S, Steel R. An immuno polymerase chain reaction screen for the detection of CJC-1295 and other growth-hormone-releasing hormone analogs in equine plasma. Drug Test Anal. 2019;11(6):804–812. PubMed.
- Timms M, Ganio K, Steel R. A method for confirming CJC-1295 abuse in equine plasma samples by LC-MS/MS. Drug Test Anal. 2019;11(8):1248–1257. PubMed.
- Memdouh S, Gavrilović I, Ng K, Cowan D, Abbate V. Advances in the detection of growth hormone releasing hormone synthetic analogs. Drug Test Anal. 2021;13(11–12):1871–1887. PubMed.
- Food and Drug Administration. Certain bulk drug substances for use in compounding may present significant safety risks (category 2 under the interim policies). FDA.
- Food and Drug Administration. Drugs@FDA: Geref (sermorelin acetate), NDA 020443. Drugs@FDA.
- Food and Drug Administration. Drugs@FDA: Egrifta (tesamorelin), BLA 022505. Drugs@FDA.
- World Anti-Doping Agency. 2026 Prohibited List, section S2.2.4 (growth hormone releasing factors), in effect 1 January 2026. WADA 2026 Prohibited List.
- Drug Enforcement Administration. Schedule III controlled substances, 21 CFR 1308.13. 21 CFR 1308.13.