Pinealon 10mg

At a glance

Strength

10 mg

Also known as

Glu-Asp-Arg, E-D-R, H-Glu-Asp-Arg-OH, L-Glutamyl-L-aspartyl-L-arginine, glutamyl-aspartyl-arginine

CAS number

175175-23-2

Molecular formula

C15H26N6O8

Molecular weight

418.4 g/mol

Sequence

Glu-Asp-Arg (EDR)

PubChem CID

10273502

What Pinealon is

Pinealon belongs to what the Khavinson group calls ultrashort peptides, two to four amino acid residues long, which its 2020 review also groups as peptide bioregulators ³. The group describes EDR as a peptide derived from Cortexin, which a 2019 paper calls a clinically approved polypeptide complex from calf cerebral cortex ⁵. Their 2020 review says the tripeptide was isolated from Cortexin ³, while the 2019 paper says EDR and a second Cortexin derivative were synthesized ⁵. Either way, the compound PubChem lists with the synonym pinealon is a single defined tripeptide, not a tissue extract ¹.

A 2013 review from the same group placed Pinealon among short neuroprotective peptides alongside Semax and Cortagen (spelled kortagen in the abstract) ⁶. A 2024 review again listed Glu-Asp-Arg with the Semax sequence Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro and other short peptides it described as multitarget agents ⁷. Selank is another short synthetic peptide from Russian research; a 2001 study at a Moscow mental-health research centre measured it and Semax against enkephalin-degrading enzymes of human serum ⁸. Their sequences, Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg-Pro-Gly-Pro and Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro, are seven residues long ⁸.

Chemical identity

PubChem CID 10273502 (titled Glu-Asp-Arg, with pinealon among its synonyms) records the free tripeptide, C15H26N6O8, with a molecular weight of 418.40 g/mol and CAS number 175175-23-2 ¹. Its IUPAC name places all three stereocentres in the S (L) configuration ¹. Two of the three residues are acidic, glutamic acid and aspartic acid, and the third, arginine, carries a guanidino group ¹. PubChem's synonyms include H-Glu-Asp-Arg-OH, L-Glutamyl-L-aspartyl-L-arginine and an entry for an acetate salt form ¹.

PubChem's molecular weight of 418.40 g/mol is for the free tripeptide; its synonyms also include an acetate salt form ¹. PubChem gives a monoisotopic mass of 418.181 Da ¹. Published certificates of analysis are listed with our lab results.

Regulatory status

As of October 2026, the FDA has not approved Pinealon, and a search of Drugs@FDA returns no product under that name ⁴. Pinealon is not named on FDA's list of bulk drug substances nominated for compounding under section 503A, updated May 14, 2026 ⁹. It is not on the corresponding section 503B list, updated March 21, 2025 ¹⁰. Nor does it appear on FDA's page of bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks in compounding ¹¹. A search of ClinicalTrials.gov for "pinealon" returns no registered studies ¹². Pinealon is supplied here as a laboratory research material, not as a medicine.

Published research

The PubMed literature on Pinealon is small. Most of the papers cited here list Khavinson or colleagues from his institute among the authors, and several are short Russian-language reports ^2131415. One exception is a 2019 biophysics paper from Saint Petersburg State University ¹⁶.

Cell studies

In cerebellar granule cells, neutrophils and PC12 pheochromocytoma cells exposed to oxidative stress, Pinealon limited the build-up of reactive oxygen species in a concentration-dependent way and reduced necrotic cell death measured by propidium iodide ². The same 2011 study recorded a delayed time course of ERK 1/2 activation and changes in the cell cycle ². An earlier 2008 study found that Pinealon and three related peptides showed no direct antioxidant activity but limited lipid peroxidation of human lipoproteins ¹⁷. In the same work, Pinealon raised the resting level of intracellular reactive oxygen species while lowering the percentage of dead cells in a neuronal population ¹⁷. In ageing cultures of brain cortex cells, EDR increased serotonin expression ¹⁸. In organotypic rat pineal gland culture, EDR did not change expression of the apoptosis marker AIF ¹⁹.

Several studies used Alzheimer's disease models. In mouse hippocampal neurons exposed to amyloid, EDR increased the number of mushroom-shaped dendritic spines by 71% ²⁰. A 2024 study converted skin fibroblasts from elderly donors into induced cortical neurons ¹⁴. EDR, KED and AEDG all increased dendritic branching in these cells ¹⁴. The two tripeptides did not change mitochondrial or lysosomal activity or p16 levels, and EDR reduced a marker of oxidative DNA damage ¹⁴.

Animal studies

Among four short peptides tested in a hypobaric hypoxia model, Pinealon had the most pronounced antihypoxic effect, according to a 2008 report ²¹. In rats whose mothers were fed extra methionine during pregnancy to raise homocysteine, Pinealon given to the mothers was followed by better spatial orientation and learning in the offspring ²². Neurons from the offspring's cerebellum showed lower reactive oxygen species accumulation and fewer necrotic cells ²². In old rats under acute hypoxia, a group at Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, with a co-author from the St. Petersburg institute, measured brain caspase-3 and serum interleukin-6 and TNF after Pinealon or Cortexin ²³¹⁵. A 2015 study by the same authors in 18-month-old rats found Cortexin had a stronger effect than Pinealon on free-radical processes and caspase-3 in the brain ¹⁵.

In 5xFAD mice, a transgenic Alzheimer's model, EDR raised CA1 dendritic spine density by 11% ¹³. It did not change the overall number of mushroom spines, and a trend towards restored long-term potentiation did not reach statistical significance ¹³.

Studies in people

Human data are limited to small Russian studies ²⁴³. One included 32 people aged 41 to 83 with polymorbidity and organic brain syndrome in remission, and compared Pinealon with a second peptide, Vesugen, on biological-age indicators ²⁴. That study also reported prooxidant activity by chemiluminescence and a fall in CD34+ blood cells ²⁴.

Proposed mechanism

The group's working idea is that EDR enters cells and binds DNA or histones to change gene expression ³. Fluorescently labelled Pinealon entered the cytoplasm, nucleus and nucleolus of HeLa cells, and in solution it appeared to bind preferentially to CAG-containing oligonucleotides ²⁵. A physics group at Saint Petersburg State University used spectroscopy, NMR and molecular dynamics to show that EDR can partly enter the major groove of DNA, and that magnesium ions promote the interaction ¹⁶. Other support is computational: docking of EDR into DNA promoter regions ¹³, to histone H1.3 ⁵, and to the LAT1, LAT2 and PEPT1 transporters ²⁶.

What is not known

Most of the studies cited here come from one research network; one outside example is a physical-chemistry study of the peptide's interaction with DNA ¹⁶. The antioxidant picture is unsettled: the 2008 study found no direct antioxidant activity ¹⁷, while the 2011 study refers to Pinealon's known antioxidant activity ². Evidence that EDR acts on particular genes comes from docking models ¹³⁵ and from binding to DNA in solution ²⁵¹⁶; this page found no study that measured EDR bound to a gene inside living cells. No registered clinical trial was found ¹², and the human reports are small and mostly in Russian ²⁴³.