← All compounds · evidence tier first, by design
| Use | E1 | E2 | E3 | E4 | E5 | E6 | E7 | E8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E6 Anti-ageing / lifespan extension | E6 | |||||||
| E7 Telomere lengthening | E7 |
Epitalon
AEDG
Synthetic tetrapeptide Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly. It was designed on the basis of epithalamin, a peptide extract of bovine pineal gland; epithalamin is a different product and its studies are not counted here.
Also: Epithalon, Epithalone, AEDG peptide, Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly
A synthetic four-amino-acid peptide (Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly) developed in Russia as a laboratory analogue of a pineal gland extract. It is sold online as a research chemical with claims of slowing ageing and lengthening telomeres. No approved medicine contains it in any jurisdiction checked. The published research comes mostly from one group of institutes and consists of rodent lifespan studies and cultured-cell experiments; no controlled human trial of an ageing outcome was identified.
- US C gray market
- EU C gray market
- UK ? not verified
- CA C gray market
- AU ? not verified
- JP ? not verified
- CN ? not verified
01Regulatory status, by jurisdiction
| Jurisdiction | Status | Detail and primary source |
|---|---|---|
| US | Not approved | No FDA-approved application: openFDA Drugs@FDA returns no application with an epitalon active ingredient (query: products.active_ingredients.name:EPITALON*; the alternative spelling EPITHALON* also returned none). openFDA states its data are unvalidated.“No matches found!”openFDA Drugs@FDA API (FDA) · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| US | Not approved | Epitalon appears on FDA's list of bulk drug substances previously in Category 2 (significant safety risks) of the compounding interim policy whose nominations were withdrawn by the nominators. FDA's safety statement remains on the page.“Compounded drugs containing epitalon may pose risk for immunogenicity for certain routes of administration due to the potential for aggregation and peptide-related impurities. FDA has not identified safety-related information regarding epitalon for the proposed route of administration.”Certain Bulk Drug Substances for Use in Compounding that May Present Significant Safety Risks (content current as of 04/22/2026) · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| EU | Not approved | No product containing epitalon (or epithalon) appears in EMA's downloadable medicines dataset (generated 10 Oct 2026), which covers centrally authorised medicines, refusals and withdrawn applications. National authorisations were not checked individually.“This includes information on marketing authorisations of centrally authorised medicines and post-authorisation procedures.”Download medicine data | European Medicines Agency (EMA) · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| CA | Not approved | Queries of Health Canada's Drug Product Database API for the active ingredient epitalon and epithalon, and for the brand name epitalon, returned no products on the retrieval date.“Search by drug identification number”Drug Product Database online query · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| UK AU JP CN | Not yet verified from a primary source. No status is shown rather than an unsourced one. | |
Sport (WADA): Prohibited · class S0. Epitalon is not named on the 2026 Prohibited List. Class S0 covers unnamed substances with no current approval by any governmental health authority; no approval was found in the jurisdictions checked, though approval elsewhere was not verified. “Any pharmacological substance which is not addressed by any of the subsequent sections of the List and with no current approval by any governmental regulatory health authority for human therapeutic use” WADA source
02What the human evidence shows
Anti-ageing / lifespan extension
No human trial of any design has been published for this use.
Lifespan and age-related tumour outcomes have been reported only in rodents, from studies by the developing research group: female mice and female rats given epitalon had changes in biomarkers of ageing, survival curves and spontaneous tumour incidence. No human study of lifespan, mortality, frailty or any clinical ageing outcome was identified. A small Russian report described night-time melatonin levels in elderly people given pineal peptides including epitalon; it measured a hormone level, not an ageing outcome, and is not counted as an efficacy trial here.
- [1] Changes in biomarkers of ageing, survival and spontaneous tumour incidence in female SHR mice given epitalon
- [2] Effects on life span and spontaneous tumour development in female rats kept under different light regimes
- [3] Night-time melatonin levels rose in old monkeys and in elderly people given pineal peptides; no ageing outcome was measured
Registered-study counts: ClinicalTrials.gov intervention search “epitalon”, fetched 2026-10-10. Registered studies include trials of other uses; the gap between registered and reported is itself a finding.
Telomere lengthening
No human trial of any design has been published for this use.
The telomere claim rests on cultured-cell experiments. Epitalon added to cultured human somatic cells was reported to induce telomerase activity and telomere elongation, and a 2025 study in human cell lines reported longer telomeres through telomerase upregulation or an alternative lengthening pathway. No study measuring telomere length in people given epitalon was identified, and no study links any telomere change from epitalon to a health outcome.
- [4] Telomerase activity and telomere elongation in cultured human somatic cells
- [5] Longer telomeres in cultured human cell lines, attributed to telomerase upregulation or alternative lengthening of telomeres
Registered-study counts: ClinicalTrials.gov intervention search “epitalon”, fetched 2026-10-10. Registered studies include trials of other uses; the gap between registered and reported is itself a finding.
03Safety signals
There are no adequate human safety data. The absence of reported harm is not evidence of safety.
04What is unknown
- No human pharmacokinetic data by any route were identified
- No controlled human trial of any ageing, frailty or mortality outcome was identified
- No measurement of telomere length in people given epitalon was identified; the telomere findings are from cultured cells
- Rodent lifespan findings come largely from the developing group and have not been independently replicated in the studies identified
- Identity and purity of material sold as epitalon are uncontrolled; a forensic report in Drug Testing and Analysis identified epitalon in two illegal pharmaceutical preparations
- Status in the UK, Australia, Japan and China was not verified from regulator sources for this record
05Product quality
No independent purity results have been published for this compound yet. The purity programme will publish full methods and vendor-named results, passes and failures, once its protocol has had legal review.
06Citations
- Effect of Epitalon on biomarkers of aging, life span and spontaneous tumor incidence in female Swiss-derived SHR mice (2003). doi:10.1023/a:1025114230714
- Effect of Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly peptide on life span and development of spontaneous tumors in female rats exposed to different illumination regimes (2007). doi:10.1007/s10517-007-0441-z
- [Normalizing effect of the pineal gland peptides on the daily melatonin rhythm in old monkeys and elderly people]. (2007). PMID 17969590
- Epithalon Peptide Induces Telomerase Activity and Telomere Elongation in Human Somatic Cells (2003). doi:10.1023/a:1025493705728
- Epitalon increases telomere length in human cell lines through telomerase upregulation or ALT activity (2025). doi:10.1007/s10522-025-10315-x
Every DOI is resolved against Crossref and every NCT number against ClinicalTrials.gov, title for title, before publication. Regulatory sources are cited inline above with a verbatim quote and retrieval date.
07Mechanism
The mechanism is not established. In cultured human cells epitalon was reported to increase telomerase activity, and the developing group has proposed that the peptide interacts with DNA and alters gene expression.
Mechanism is placed last on purpose: a plausible mechanism is not evidence that a compound works in people.
Reviewed by OSMF research team (AI-assisted, source-verified) on 2026-10-10. Found an error? It goes in the corrections log: report it.