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What it is
A 4-amino-acid peptide (Ala-Glu-Asp-Arg) from the Khavinson short peptide series, in which each sequence is proposed to act on a specific tissue — here cardiac. Epitalon is the best-known member of the same family.
How it is proposed to work
The programme's central hypothesis is that very short peptides can enter cells, reach the nucleus and interact with DNA in a sequence-specific way, modulating gene expression in the tissue each peptide is matched to. This is a strong and specific claim. It is also testable, and independent testing is what the literature most lacks.
Approved medical uses
None. Cardiogen has no approved human medical indication in the jurisdictions we track. Any use is outside an approved label.
Human research
Each entry states what the study found and, separately, what it cannot show.
No adequate published human research. This absence is the reason for the evidence grade above — it is not a gap we can fill with animal data.
Preclinical research
Animal and laboratory work. Useful for generating hypotheses; it cannot establish that something works in people.
- In vitro2012
Tetrapeptide Ala-Glu-Asp-Arg raised cytoskeletal and nuclear-matrix protein expression in cultured mouse fibroblasts
Finding. In cultured mouse embryonic fibroblasts, the tetrapeptide H-Ala-Glu-Asp-Arg-OH, named by its sequence in the title, increased expression of the cytoskeletal proteins actin, tubulin and vimentin by 2-5-fold and of the nuclear matrix proteins lamin A and lamin C by 2-3-fold. The authors say this effect explains the tetrapeptide's "previously reported cardioprotective activity", on the view that it stimulates cell proliferation and reduces apoptosis. That last step is their interpretation.
Limitation. This comes from the originating St Petersburg group. Khavinson is first author, with the I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, St Petersburg, printed as his affiliation, and Lin'kova, Polyakova and Kvetnoy are among the co-authors. We found no independent replication, and that is the central reason for the grade. The cells are mouse embryonic fibroblasts, not heart cells, and the abstract reports no cardiac endpoint. The abstract does not say which study supplied the cardioprotective activity it refers to. It also gives no p-values and does not describe the comparison condition. All of this is read from the abstract, not the full paper. A 2009 organotypic explant study in rat myocardium (Chalisova et al., PMID 20210190) is closer to cardiac tissue. Its PubMed record does not list Khavinson as an author or print an affiliation, and its abstract gives the name 'cardiogen' without printing the sequence. This paper was preferred because it names the exact sequence it tested.
Potential safety concerns
- CautionInsufficient
No systematic human safety dataset we could inspect. Very short peptides are often assumed benign on the basis of size alone, which is an assumption rather than a finding.
- CautionInsufficient
If the nuclear gene-expression mechanism is real, its long-term consequences would need study. If it is not real, the compound does nothing. Both possibilities argue for evidence before use, and neither has been resolved.
Known interactions and contraindication considerations
- Uncharacterised in accessible literature.
This list is not exhaustive and is not a substitute for a clinician reviewing your full medication history.
Regulatory status
Status is shown per jurisdiction and is accurate only as of the date stated. Where a compound is approved, the approval is bound to a specific formulation, manufacturer and indication — shown in the detail column.
| Jurisdiction | Standing | Detail |
|---|---|---|
Russian Federation Ministry of Health / Roszdravnadzor | Listed as of 11 Aug 2026 | Marketed in Russia, generally in a supplement or parapharmaceutical category rather than as a registered medicine. Certificate details in circulation could not be verified: the same number appears against different products on the manufacturer's own materials, and they follow a format from a registration regime since superseded. |
United States FDA | Unapproved / investigational as of 11 Aug 2026 | No marketing authorisation. The FDA has not evaluated this compound — that is an absence of any opinion, not a negative finding. |
European Union EMA | Unapproved / investigational as of 11 Aug 2026 | No marketing authorisation. |
India CDSCO | Unapproved / investigational as of 11 Aug 2026 | Not approved for human use. A first-time synthetically manufactured peptide falls under the new-drug pathway. |
How it is being used
What the grey community actually runs, the reasoning they give, and our read on whether it follows from known biology. This is observation, not evidence, and not a recommendation.
No community use documented for this compound yet. Absence here means our editorial team has not reviewed and verified a pattern — not that none exists.
Active clinical trials
No registered trials currently tracked for Cardiogen.
What remains unknown
The questions that would change our assessment if they were answered.
- Can any of the central findings be replicated by a group with no connection to the originating institute?
- Does a peptide this short reach the nucleus intact in a human?
- Is tissue specificity demonstrated, or inferred from the tissue each peptide was derived from?
References
Editorial change history
When we change a grade or a regulatory note, we log it here rather than editing quietly.
Dossier created. All registration certificate numbers and all trial figures excluded as unverifiable. Graded on absence of independent replication, not on country of origin.
The generic humanResearch entry 'cardiogen-h1' and its placeholder reference 'ref-cardiogen-1' were removed, not filled, which leaves humanResearch empty. Searches of PubMed, Europe PMC and ClinicalTrials.gov found no human study of the Ala-Glu-Asp-Arg tetrapeptide. The ClinicalTrials.gov hits for 'cardiogen' were the unrelated CardioGen-82 rubidium generator. One preclinicalResearch entry was added: Khavinson et al. 2012 (PMID 22977870), an in-vitro study in cultured mouse embryonic fibroblasts. Its reference replaces the placeholder in the dossier references. The sequence Ala-Glu-Asp-Arg was checked against the originating group's own peptide table (PMID 35887081, Table 2, 'Cardiogen (AEDR)') and its US Patent 7,662,789 (SEQ ID NO:1), and it is unchanged. The 'insufficient' grade stands on the same ground as before: we found no independent replication. Before publication, 'synthetic' was removed from the entry because the source abstract does not use the word. An unsupported claim that Chalisova et al. 2009 belonged to the same circle as the originating group was replaced with what its PubMed record actually shows.
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