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CJC-1295 W/ Dac

CJC-1295 with DAC / Drug Affinity Complex

GH & GrowthInjectable📊 Correlative data

CJC-1295 W/ Dac (CJC-1295 with DAC / Drug Affinity Complex) is a gh & growth research compound. Long-acting GHRH analog; the DAC binds albumin so it sustains GH/IGF-1 elevation for days rather than pulsing.

Research & educational use only. The information below summarizes published research and mechanisms. It is not medical advice or a recommendation for human use. The protocol that uses it — dosing, sequence and what to retest — is inside Skool ($10/mo).

CJC-1295 W/ Dac quick facts

Reported research dose (Injectable)1mg-2mg
RouteSubq
Frequency1-2x Week
Half-life~6–8 days
FormsInjectable
Evidence levelHuman PK data
Other forms availableOral — dosed differently
Coach Cam’s take

The 'set-and-forget' GHRH — steady elevation. Different tool than the pulsatile no-DAC version.

How CJC-1295 W/ Dac works

Long-acting GHRH analog; the DAC binds albumin so it sustains GH/IGF-1 elevation for days rather than pulsing.

Proposed benefits

Sustained GH/IGF-1 elevation for recovery, sleep and lean-mass support.

Where to get CJC-1295 W/ Dac

CJC-1295 W/ Dac is sold in 2 forms. They are not interchangeable — the dose and the route differ, so pick the one this page describes unless you know why you want another.

Bacteriostatic water is the diluent — sterile water with 0.9% benzyl alcohol, which is what lets a vial be drawn from more than once. It does not come with the vial, and unlike the compound it is bought again every time.

Need bacteriostatic water? Get it at AminoWell USA (my company) → Code CAMERON.

The evidence for CJC-1295 W/ Dac

Graded by what exists behind each claim.

✅ Clinically validated

📊 Correlative data

🧪 Theoretical / extrapolated

How to read these tiers: they say how much human evidence exists, not how well something works — and ✗ flags harm, never a disappointing trial. How the evidence tiers work →

What CJC-1295 W/ Dac actually does

The DAC is one chemical group, and everything that separates this product from the version without it follows from that group’s reaction chemistry. The molecule is the same tetrasubstituted GHRH(1-29) analog with a lysine added at position 30, and on that lysine’s side chain a maleimidopropionic acid group. The doping-control description is exact: a 30-amino-acid peptide carrying a reactive maleimidopropionic acid group that covalently links the peptide to free thiols on the surface of plasma proteins Timms 2019.

Read the word ‘covalently’ carefully, because it is the whole page. A maleimide and a thiol undergo Michael addition to form a thioether — a carbon–sulfur single bond that does not come apart. Human serum albumin carries exactly one free cysteine, Cys34, and it is the most abundant free thiol in plasma. So the injected drug finds albumin and stays there. The clinical paper states it plainly: CJC-1295 binds permanently to endogenous albumin after injection Ionescu 2006.

This is categorically different from every other long-acting peptide in this Vault. Survodutide, cagrilintide, amycretin and the rest of the weekly incretins carry a fatty acid that binds albumin reversibly: the drug is in equilibrium between bound and free, exchanges continuously, and can in principle be displaced. This one is welded on. There is no equilibrium and nothing to displace.

The mass arithmetic, which explains the half-life better than the word ‘albumin binding’ does. The peptide core with the extra lysine and a C-terminal amide computes to 3,496.1 Da; the maleimidopropionyl group adds 151.1 Da after losing water in the amide bond, giving the unconjugated drug at about 3,647 Da. Albumin is roughly 66,500 Da. So the moment the thioether forms, the circulating species goes from 3.6 kDa to about 70 kDa — from well below the glomerular filtration cut-off to above it. The kidney stops seeing it. That single step, not any protease resistance, is why the half-life becomes 5.8 to 8.1 days Teichman 2006 and about 8 days in the second study Ionescu 2006, against roughly thirty minutes for the same peptide without the group.

And now the consequence, which is a real argument rather than a feature. Growth hormone is normally released in discrete pulses with near-empty troughs between them. A GHRH agonist that persists for a week does not produce pulses — it produces standing stimulation. The published measurement of what that does is the most important experiment this compound has, and it is discussed in full below.

Cell, rodent, human — and where it stops

Two human studies exist, both published in 2006, and between them they contain everything anyone knows about this molecule in a person.

Study one: dose, duration and accumulation. Healthy adults aged 21 to 61, four ascending single doses in the first protocol, then two or three weekly or biweekly doses in the second, over studies lasting 28 and 49 days. Growth hormone rose 2- to 10-fold for 6 days or more; IGF-I rose 1.5- to 3-fold for 9 to 11 days. The mean half-life was 5.8 to 8.1 days. After multiple doses, IGF-I remained elevated for up to 28 days, and the authors report evidence of a cumulative effect. Doses of 30 or 60 micrograms per kilogram were identified as safe; no serious adverse reactions were reported Teichman 2006.

Study two: the pulsatility experiment, and it is the one that should be read line by line. Healthy men aged 20 to 40, a single dose of 60 or 90 micrograms per kilogram, assessed one week after injection with 20-minute blood sampling across an overnight 12-hour period. Findings: basal GH up 7.5-fold (P < 0.0001); overall GH secretion up 46% (P < 0.01); IGF-I up 45% (P < 0.001); the frequency and magnitude of GH secretory pulses were unaltered; and no significant difference between the 60 and 90 microgram doses Ionescu 2006.

That is usually quoted as ‘pulsatility is preserved’, and it is — but look at which two numbers moved. Basal GH — the trough between pulses — went up 7.5-fold. Total GH secretion across twelve hours went up 46%. Pulse frequency and pulse height did not change at all. The extra growth hormone is almost entirely trough, not peak. The pulses are still there; the valleys between them have been filled in. That is a materially different physiological state from the one the pulses alone represent, and calling it ‘preserved pulsatility’ hides it.

Why filling in the troughs is not a neutral change — labeled as extrapolation, because that is what it is. Hepatic responses to growth hormone are pattern-sensitive as well as dose-sensitive: in rodents, the same total GH delivered in pulses versus continuously drives different hepatic gene programs, and it is the pattern rather than the amount that produces the sexually dimorphic expression difference. Nobody has tested whether a 7.5-fold trough elevation in a human shifts hepatic output in the same direction. It is a hypothesis, it is the most interesting question this compound raises, and it is answerable with markers that already exist.

The third result in that paper, which nobody quotes at all. IGF-I increases did not correlate with any parameter of GH secretion Ionescu 2006. So on this drug, IGF-1 is not a proxy for growth hormone exposure. Every protocol that tracks IGF-1 to infer ‘how much GH am I getting’ is resting on a correlation that the only study to look for it did not find.

What exists beyond those two papers is analytical. An immuno-PCR screen built specifically because conjugation to plasma protein prevents detection by top-down mass-spectrometry peptide screening detects the CJC-1295–protein conjugate down to 0.8 pg/mL, with a 50 pg/mL screening threshold in equine plasma Timms 2019; and an LC-MS/MS study of four GHRH analogs identified 19 major in vitro metabolites at limits of detection generally at or below 1 ng/mL Memdouh 2021.

The obstacles, one at a time. (1) Two human studies, both from 2006, longest 49 days Teichman 2006 Ionescu 2006. There is no modern human data, no phase 3, and no long-term follow-up of anyone. (2) The published doses are far above this site’s card. 30 to 90 micrograms per kilogram is 2.1 to 6.3 mg in a 70 kg adult; the card lists 1 to 2 mg. (3) The pulsatility study sampled one overnight window, one week after one injection Ionescu 2006 — it does not describe what twelve weeks of weekly dosing does to the same measurement. (4) Nothing has ever been measured past day 49, while IGF-1 was still elevated at day 28 after multiple doses Teichman 2006. (5) No body composition, no strength, no clinical endpoint of any kind was reported in either study.

CJC-1295 W/ Dac pharmacokinetics — how much of it actually gets in

This is the compound in this cohort whose pharmacokinetics are actually measured in humans, and the card’s ‘~6–8 days’ is close to right: the published figures are 5.8 to 8.1 days Teichman 2006 and about 8 days Ionescu 2006.

What holds it in the body, precisely. A thioether bond between the maleimide and a free plasma-protein thiol Timms 2019, with albumin’s Cys34 the overwhelmingly likely partner because it is the one free cysteine on the most abundant plasma protein. The conjugate is described as permanent Ionescu 2006. The consequence is a jump from 3,647 Da to roughly 70,000 Da, which puts the drug above the glomerular filtration threshold and removes renal clearance from the equation entirely.

What sets the ceiling, and why the observed half-life is shorter than that ceiling. Albumin itself turns over with a half-life of roughly 19 days. If the conjugate were cleared only by albumin turnover, the drug would last about that long. It lasts 5.8 to 8.1 days Teichman 2006, which means the peptide portion is being chewed off the carrier by plasma and tissue peptidases while the carrier itself survives. That difference — roughly two- to threefold — is the quantitative signature of proteolysis operating on a protected substrate.

What accumulation means in practice, with the published number. After multiple doses, IGF-I stayed elevated up to 28 days and the authors describe a cumulative effect Teichman 2006. At a 7-day half-life, weekly dosing reaches steady state at roughly twice the concentration a single dose produces, and four to five weeks are needed to get there. Two consequences follow directly: the first month under-represents the protocol, and stopping leaves a month of tapering exposure during which the axis is still being stimulated.

What degrades it. Peptidases acting on the peptide arm of the conjugate; no cytochrome involvement, so no metabolic drug interaction. The 19 major in vitro metabolites identified across this analog family Memdouh 2021 are the fragments of that process.

A chemistry point that belongs in a pharmacokinetics section. The maleimide is only reactive while it is intact. In water at neutral or slightly alkaline pH, maleimides hydrolyze to the corresponding maleamic acid, which no longer adds to a thiol. A vial reconstituted in bacteriostatic water and kept for weeks is therefore losing conjugation capacity on a clock nobody measures — and a molecule whose DAC has hydrolyzed is not a week-long drug at all. It is the short-acting peptide, at a dose chosen for the long one.

The oral barrier and the route. Absolute; subcutaneous. There is no oral form and there could not be one: the maleimide would react with the first thiol it met in the gut.

What would have to be true, and how you would know it was not

Four predictions. The second and third both argue against the way this compound is used.

1. IGF-1 should rise and stay risen for weeks after stopping. Draw IGF-1 at baseline, at day 7 after the first dose, at 6 weeks on protocol, and — the important one — at 4 weeks after the last injection. The published behavior is a 1.5- to 3-fold rise lasting 9 to 11 days from a single dose and elevation persisting up to 28 days after multiple doses Teichman 2006. A person who stops and retests a week later has not measured their off-drug baseline; they have measured the tail.

2. IGF-1 will not tell you how much growth hormone you are getting, and that cuts against the standard protocol. The only study that looked reported that IGF-I increases did not correlate with any parameter of GH secretion Ionescu 2006. So the falsifiable version is: if IGF-1 tracked GH exposure on this drug, people with the largest IGF-1 rises would report the largest effects, and the 2006 data predict they will not. Track both a symptom log and IGF-1 and expect them to disagree.

3. Fasting insulin should rise, and this is the cost of filling in the troughs. Growth hormone opposes insulin action at liver and muscle, and the physiological trough between pulses is when insulin sensitivity recovers. This drug raises basal GH 7.5-fold Ionescu 2006, which is precisely an attack on that recovery window. Draw fasting insulin and HbA1c at baseline, 6 and 12 weeks. A rising fasting insulin with a flat HbA1c is the early picture; it is the most predictable adverse metabolic consequence of this molecule and almost nobody measures it.

4. The trough test, which is the one experiment a single person can run that would be new. Draw serum growth hormone at a fixed mid-afternoon time — deliberately between expected pulses — before starting and again seven days after a dose. The prediction from the published data is a large rise in that trough value Ionescu 2006. A single random GH is uninterpretable on a normal person for exactly the reason that makes it interpretable here: the pulses are unchanged and only the baseline has moved.

What nobody has tested yet

Five experiments. The third one is a quality-control question that affects every vial sold and nobody has ever asked it.

1. Nobody has repeated the pulsatility study on a chronic protocol. The 20-minute overnight sampling was done once, one week after a single injection Ionescu 2006. Whether twelve weeks of weekly dosing still leaves pulse frequency and amplitude untouched, or whether the somatotroph flattens out under standing stimulation, is unmeasured — and it is the single most important question about a drug whose selling point is that it does not abolish pulses.

2. Nobody has measured the pattern-sensitive hepatic markers. If continuous GH signaling drives a different hepatic program from pulsatile GH, the human read-outs would be IGFBP-3, the acid-labile subunit, and SHBG, all of which are ordinary laboratory tests. None of them appears in either 2006 paper. Adding three assays to a design that already exists would turn a rodent hypothesis into a human result.

3. Nobody has measured the conjugation efficiency of a real vial. The DAC works only while the maleimide is intact, and maleimides hydrolyze in aqueous solution to a species that cannot conjugate. Nothing published describes how much intact maleimide survives lyophilization, shipping and two weeks in a refrigerator after reconstitution. A thiol-titration assay would answer it in an afternoon and would tell buyers whether they are receiving an 8-day drug or a 30-minute one at eight-day pricing.

4. Nobody has asked what else the maleimide reacts with. Its chemistry is not selective for albumin — it adds to any accessible thiol Timms 2019, and the plasma pool includes free cysteine, homocysteine, glutathione and the surface thiols of circulating cells. What fraction of an injected dose ends up on something other than albumin, and what those adducts do, has never been reported for this drug in any species.

5. Nobody has followed anyone past 49 days. Both human studies stopped there Teichman 2006, with IGF-1 still elevated at day 28 after multiple dosing. The community protocol is months to years. There is no published data on what a year of standing GHRH receptor stimulation does to the pituitary, to glucose handling, or to anything else.

CJC-1295 W/ Dac — its own safety story, not its class's

The class block on this page is written for growth-hormone secretagogues. Five things below belong to a covalently albumin-conjugated, week-long GHRH analog.

1. You cannot take it back. Every other long-acting peptide in this catalog binds albumin reversibly. This one forms a covalent thioether Timms 2019 and is described as binding permanently Ionescu 2006. If a person reacts badly to it, the response is not a matter of hours or of stopping the next dose: the drug is chemically attached to a carrier with a multi-day residence and IGF-1 stays elevated up to 28 days after multiple doses Teichman 2006. That asymmetry — fast to start, weeks to leave — is the defining safety property of this molecule and it is never stated on a vendor page.

2. The doses that were actually studied are two to three times the ones circulating. 30 to 90 micrograms per kilogram Teichman 2006 Ionescu 2006 is 2.1 to 6.3 mg in a 70 kg adult. This site’s card says 1 to 2 mg. The card is the conservative one here, and anyone scaling up toward the ‘studied’ dose should know that the study was 28 to 49 days long and reported no outcome beyond hormone levels.

3. The trough elevation is the risk, not the peak. Basal GH up 7.5-fold with pulses unchanged Ionescu 2006 means the insulin-sensitizing window between pulses has been closed. The predictable consequences of sustained GH exposure — rising fasting insulin, fluid retention, carpal tunnel symptoms, joint aching — are consequences of standing exposure specifically, and this is the form that produces it. The short-acting version on the previous page is not.

4. Maleimide chemistry is indiscriminate. The reactive group adds to free thiols on plasma proteins Timms 2019, and albumin is the most abundant target rather than the only one. Injecting a thiol-reactive electrophile weekly for months has no published safety characterization in humans at all — the two 2006 studies ran 28 and 49 days Teichman 2006.

5. What the record is, stated plainly. Two studies, one year, twenty years ago, in healthy adults, with hormone levels as the only endpoints, and no development program since. The compound is detectable in anti-doping testing down to 0.8 pg/mL as a protein conjugate Timms 2019, which matters for anyone competing. ‘Human PK data’ is a fair evidence tier for it — and PK data is not efficacy data, not safety data at duration, and not a reason to run it for a year.

Sources read for this page

CJC-1295 W/ Dac — safety, predicted from mechanism

Predicted from mechanism, not from a human safety trial. How that reasoning works →

What the mechanism predicts

Derived from the molecule, not a trial.

What has actually been reported

How to reduce the risk

Same mechanism as the prediction.

What it does to your bloodwork

A fact about the assay.

What it overlaps with

Don't run this if

The honest unknown

Not medical advice. If you take prescription medication or have a diagnosed condition, check this with a pharmacist or doctor.

CJC-1295 W/ Dac — interference & stacking

Predicted from mechanism, not from an interaction study. How mechanism-predicted claims are made →

What CJC-1295 W/ Dac moves on your bloodwork

Expected direction, not a measured one.

Everything above follows from one fact: these raise GH and therefore IGF-1. Nothing here needs a trial of the specific molecule.

🔒
The dose is the easy part. Making CJC-1295 W/ Dac actually work is what's behind Skool:
Running it
  • How to work up to it, and when not to
  • When to take it, and why that window
  • Cycle length
  • Time off between cycles
  • Fasted or fed, and when in the day
  • Needle gauge and injection site
  • How the forms differ in dose
  • Coach Cam's personal notes
Stacking it
  • Which compounds push the same lever, and why the dose adds up faster than people count
  • What blunts it — the stacks that waste your money
  • What compounds the risk, so a side effect arrives sooner than any one of them suggests
  • Coach Cam's read on running it alongside the rest of your protocol

Everything above is free and stays free. Skool is where it becomes a plan — CJC-1295 W/ Dac in an order, with the rest of what you're running.

Unlock in Skool — $10/mo →

Bloodwork to run alongside CJC-1295 W/ Dac

Baseline first, then again at 8–12 weeks.

MarkerWhat it’s watching for
IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor 1)Multi-day half-life means SUSTAINED elevation, not pulses — IGF-1 runs higher
Fasting InsulinContinuous GH costs more insulin sensitivity than pulsatile does
HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c)The three-month confirmation that the change is real
Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP)Fasting glucose and organ baseline

The “Running GH Peptides or MK-677” panel covers these in one order — 9 markers, $132.30 with the discount applied.

Check results you already have → · All 103 markers A–Z

CJC-1295 W/ Dac — frequently asked questions

What is CJC-1295 W/ Dac?

CJC-1295 W/ Dac (CJC-1295 with DAC / Drug Affinity Complex) is a gh & growth research compound. Long-acting GHRH analog; the DAC binds albumin so it sustains GH/IGF-1 elevation for days rather than pulsing.

Is the full CJC-1295 W/ Dac protocol on this page?

The reported research dose is on this page, along with how CJC-1295 W/ Dac works and the evidence behind it. The protocol — how to work up to it, frequency, cycle length, time off, what not to stack it with and Coach Cam's notes — is inside Skool.

What is the half-life of CJC-1295 W/ Dac?

CJC-1295 W/ Dac has an approximate half-life of ~6–8 days, which is part of what determines how often it's dosed.

What's the evidence behind CJC-1295 W/ Dac?

Current evidence level: Human PK data. CJC-1295 W/ Dac is offered for research purposes only and is not an approved medicine.

What CJC-1295 W/ Dac is used for

CJC-1295 W/ Dac appears under 1 goal in the goal router.

💪 Build muscle & strengthGH / IGF-1 axis

Where this goes next

Go deeper$10/mo

The pages here are the frameworks. The protocols — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — are inside Skool.

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