CJC-1295 Dosage Guide 2026: With DAC vs Without DAC

The calculator

What it wants and what it gives back: a vial size, a water amount, a syringe type and a dose go in; out come the concentration, the volume, and the units that volume reads as.

CJC-1295 with DAC vs without DAC: which dosage figure belongs to which?

Why this sits before the arithmetic: every duration figure further down this page was measured on one specific molecule, and two different molecules are sold under this one name. Reading a number from one against the other is the mistake this section exists to prevent, and it is not a rounding error: the published circulation figures differ by roughly three orders of magnitude.

What DAC is: a label used in the listings, not a term from the trial papers. The chemistry sits in the paper that named the compound. Jetté et al. (Endocrinology, 2005) describe CJC-1295 as a tetrasubstituted form of human GRF(1-29) carrying one added lysine at the C terminus, which bears an N-epsilon-3-maleimidopropionamide group. That group bonds to the free thiol on Cys34 of serum albumin, so the peptide circulates attached to albumin rather than being cleared as a free peptide. In rats the same paper found it present in plasma beyond 72 hours.

What the other version is: without DAC means without that albumin-binding group, so what is sold as CJC-1295 without DAC, cjc 1295 no dac, or Mod GRF 1-29 is the peptide with nothing bonding it to albumin. We searched the published human literature for a trial of it and found none, under any of those names.

One paper sits exactly on the seam: when the Norwegian doping-control laboratory analyzed an unknown preparation in 2009, what it identified was a 29 amino acid peptide with a C-terminal amide, whose sequence it reported as consistent with the peptide then marketed under the name CJC-1295 (Henninge et al., Drug Test Anal 2010). Jetté's albumin-binding molecule carries a residue past position 29. The name on a vial and the molecule inside it are two separate facts, and that paper is the reason we can say so rather than assume it.

The with-DAC figures, and only the with-DAC figures: Teichman et al. estimated the half-life of CJC-1295 at 5.8 to 8.1 days, with mean GH up 2- to 10-fold for six days or more after a single injection. Ionescu and Frohman, describing the same albumin-binding molecule, give its half-life as 8 days.

The nearest published human numbers on the other side: there is no half-life for the without-DAC peptide, so the closest measured figures belong to the parent hormone rather than to the peptide being sold. Soule, King and Millar (JCEM, 1994) infused GHRH(1-29)NH2 and its D-Ala2 analog into ten normal men and measured disappearance half-times of 4.3 and 6.7 minutes. Frohman et al. (J Clin Invest, 1986) measured 6.8 minutes for GRH(1-44)NH2 after intravenous injection in normal subjects, and attributed its inactivation to a plasma dipeptidylaminopeptidase that cleaves it into a fragment with less than a thousandth of the original activity.

The gap, as arithmetic rather than as an adjective: 5.8 days is 8,352 minutes. Set against Soule's 4.3 minutes for the unconjugated 29-residue hormone, that is about 1,900 times longer. Those are different molecules measured by different routes, an intravenous infusion against a subcutaneous injection, so treat the ratio as an order-of-magnitude statement and nothing finer. It is still the reason the two versions cannot share a schedule.

What that does to frequency, reported rather than advised: Teichman's second study gave two or three doses, weekly or biweekly, and after multiple doses mean IGF-1 stayed above baseline for up to 28 days. Ionescu and Frohman sampled a full week after one injection and still measured trough GH up 7.5-fold. Those schedules were built around a half-life measured in days. No published trial has tested the without-DAC peptide on any schedule at all, so there is no trial frequency to report for it, and this page will not supply one in place of the missing evidence.

The practical consequence for a vial in front of you: if a listing does not say which version it is, the published record answers nothing about it. That is a sourcing question before it is a dosing question, and no arithmetic below can repair it.

How does the units math work?

Where CJC-1295 gets slippery: the trials dosed in micrograms per kilogram of bodyweight, the vials are labeled in milligrams, and the barrel is marked in neither. The arithmetic below reconciles the last two, in general terms, on nobody's bodyweight.

The 5mg vial, taken to 2mL: 5mg of powder and 2mL of bacteriostatic water make 2.5mg per mL, or 2,500mcg per mL.

Turning that into barrel units: a U-100 barrel carries 100 units to the milliliter, so each unit is a hundredth of a milliliter, holding 25mcg, or 0.025mg at this concentration. From there: 100mcg is 4 units, 1mg is 40 units, 2mg is 80 units.

Now the 2mg vial: filled to 1mL it comes out at 2mg per mL, or 2,000mcg per mL.

Twenty micrograms to the unit now: a unit holds 20mcg rather than 25mcg, so the same 100mcg is 5 units, not 4, and the whole 2mg would fill 100 units, the entire barrel.

What a posted "5 units" actually hides: on those two mixes it is 100mcg in one vial and 125mcg in the other, with nothing on the barrel to say which.

A second scale, printed on nothing: the vial says nothing about the syringe, and the table above holds the barrel constant. That same U-100 arithmetic, drawn on a U-40, carries 2.5x the intended volume at every mark, which makes the barrel scale the second of the three variables this page has to keep apart.

Then the microgram problem, which the GLP-1 guides do not have: trials and forums both write these doses in micrograms, and 1mg is 1,000mcg, so mixing up the two is a thousandfold error on paper.

Three variables, not two: concentration, syringe scale, and micrograms against milligrams, each with its own page in our dose math index. The first two are worked above; the third is why every figure on this page is written out in micrograms rather than left in decimals of a milligram.

How many units is 100mcg of CJC-1295?

Two vials, two answers: at 2.5mg per mL (a 5mg vial plus 2mL of water), 100mcg reads as 4 units on a U-100 syringe. At 2mg per mL (a 2mg vial plus 1mL), the same 100mcg reads as 5 units.

Why one number cannot answer it: no microgram or milligram amount converts to one universal units number, and CJC-1295 stacks a second problem on top of the first. Teichman's arms were dosed by micrograms per kilogram, so the trial figure is not even a fixed microgram amount until a bodyweight is attached to it.

Is the studied dose the same as the internet dose?

Why this is a comparison and not an answer: the trial figures and the posted figures are not written in the same units, so they cannot simply be lined up and one declared right. Below they sit side by side, each labeled with where it came from.

The two columns are not describing the same molecule, let alone the same schedule.

The question underneath the arithmetic: whether a 2006-era pharmacology signal, measured in healthy volunteers for at most 49 days, carries over to the uses the threads are chasing. The most recent peer-reviewed human readout is the 2009 proteomics follow-up in 11 men, and it did not take that question up either.

What's not known yet?

Still investigational, two decades on: no FDA-approved product contains CJC-1295, under any brand name. The FDA evaluation of the five CJC-1295 bulk substances, prepared for the December 2024 compounding advisory committee and cited below, states that none of the five is a component of an FDA-approved drug, that no approved product containing any form of CJC-1295 exists in the twelve other countries it surveyed, and that none has been authorized for use in the European Union by the European Medicines Agency. Searches of Drugs@FDA and DailyMed run on 29 July 2026 returned no record under the name.

The development program that stopped: the original one ended after the early studies, and no phase 3 trial was ever run. Nothing newer than the 2006 studies and a 2009 proteomics follow-up in 11 men has reached a peer-reviewed human readout.

Four things the published record does not cover:

• No published human data past 49 days of follow-up, which is the length of the longer of Teichman's two studies.
• No published human trials at all for the without-DAC version, under that name or as Mod GRF 1-29.
• No verified data on stopping and restarting, or on years of sustained IGF-1 elevation.
• No verified data on the community schedules: the daily no-DAC pulses have never been studied in a controlled trial, and the weekly with-DAC runs were studied only in Teichman's early work, at trial doses.

The without-DAC line is the emptiest of the four: no trial, no half-life, and no name that reliably describes the molecule.

The gap that sits above every figure above: with no approved product there is no regulatory review of what a vial holds, and no compendial specification to check one against. The same FDA evaluation records that no United States Pharmacopeia or National Formulary drug substance monograph applies to any of the five forms.

Four things a listing asserts rather than demonstrates: identity, purity, sterility, and the labeled concentration itself. What any particular vial has been tested for, and by whom, is a question about that vial and its seller that this page does not answer.

The doping-control record: the 2009 analysis of an unknown preparation identified a peptide matching CJC-1295 and noted that such peptides were already being made illicitly and sold before their trials finished (Henninge et al., 2010). The same paper flags CJC-1295 as a WADA-prohibited substance.

The one we would chase first: on this compound the sourcing question has two halves, because the vial has to be the right molecule before it can be the right milligrams. A listing that does not say with DAC or without has already failed the first half.

How this page is sourced

Papers and registry records, read directly: every research figure above came out of the source document itself, never out of someone else's summary of it.

The nine sources: listed below with their DOIs, PubMed IDs, registry identifier and one FDA evaluation document. Each is listed below with its identifier, and every figure on this page traces back to one of them.

One correction logged here: reference 3 previously carried a DOI ending 2004-0986. Re-checked 30 July 2026: that string returns HTTP 404 from both the CrossRef API and doi.org, so it is a dead literal and not a second record for the same paper. The Jetté paper's registered DOI is 10.1210/en.2004-1286, CrossRef HTTP 200 the same day, paired with PMID 15817669, and it is the one printed below.

What we got wrong until 30 July 2026, stated plainly: two things, both about saying more than a source supports. The structure statistic called one added C-terminal residue the whole structural difference, when the residue carries a maleimidopropionamide group and that group, not the lysine, is what binds albumin. And the phase 2 paragraph reported the registry's enrollment as though it were the only figure on record, and said no reason for the termination existed, when FDA's own evaluation gives a different enrollment count and relays a reason. Both now print the conflict instead of one side of it.

The rulebook behind that reference list: our sourcing and citation-verification standard sits on the methodology page, which is also where a correction to any figure above is recorded first.

Last reviewed: 19 July 2026.

1. 1

   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. doi:10.1210/jc.2005-1536. PMID 16352683.

2. 2

   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):4792-7. doi:10.1210/jc.2006-1702. PMID 17018654.

3. 3

   Jetté L, Léger R, Thibaudeau K, Benquet C, Robitaille M, Pellerin I, Paradis V, van Wyk P, Pham K, Bridon DP. 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):3052-8. doi:10.1210/en.2004-1286. PMID 15817669.

4. 4

   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):471-7. doi:10.1016/j.ghir.2009.03.001. PMID 19386527.

5. 5

   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):647-50. doi:10.1002/dta.233. PMID 21204297.

6. 6

   Soule S, King JA, Millar RP. Incorporation of D-Ala2 in growth hormone-releasing hormone-(1-29)-NH2 increases the half-life and decreases metabolic clearance in normal men. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1994;79(4):1208-11. doi:10.1210/jcem.79.4.7962295. PMID 7962295.

7. 7

   Frohman LA, Downs TR, Williams TC, Heimer EP, Pan YC, Felix AM. 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):906-13. doi:10.1172/JCI112679. PMID 3093533.

8. 8

   ConjuChem. A Multicenter, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Double-Blind, Phase 2 Study to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of CJC 1295 Administered for 12 Weeks in HIV Infected Patients With HIV Associated Visceral Obesity. Study GH100-013, enrollment 120, status terminated, no reason posted, no results posted, record last updated 16 October 2006. Pulled from the ClinicalTrials.gov v2 API on 30 July 2026, HTTP 200, where the enrollment field carries the count with no actual or anticipated label. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00267527.

9. 9

   U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Briefing Document, Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee Meeting, 4 December 2024. FDA Evaluation of CJC-1295-Related Bulk Drug Substances: CJC-1295 free base, CJC-1295 acetate, CJC-1295 with drug affinity complex free base, CJC-1295 DAC acetate and CJC-1295 DAC trifluoroacetate. Introduction, and section II.B.4, recognition of the substance in other countries or foreign pharmacopeias. The 192 enrolled and randomized figure, the account of the eleventh weekly injection and the death, and the statement that the data was never published are all in section II.C, human safety, under reported adverse reactions, where the agency footnotes them to two internet reports and calls them anecdotal. Retrieved 30 July 2026, HTTP 200. fda.gov, PCAC briefing document.