What is Cortagen?

What sources report

Cortagen is a chain of four amino acids: alanine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid and proline.³ PubChem records it as CID 18439621, with the formula C17H26N4O9 and a molar mass of 430.4 g/mol.¹ A CAS number, 335591-03-2, appears on that record only as a depositor-supplied synonym.² The peptide was obtained by directed synthesis after an amino acid analysis of Cortexin, a peptide preparation extracted from brain cortex.³ Cortexin was created at the Military Medical Academy in 1986, and its reported effects on memory and attention in patient groups belong to the extract, not to Cortagen.¹⁶

Nerve repair

The best-known result is from 2000. Rats had the sciatic nerve cut and sutured, then received Cortagen injected into muscle for 10 days; the growth rate of regenerating nerve fibers rose by 27% and their conduction velocity by 40%.⁴ A 2002 report from the same group described a delayed effect of Cortagen on recovery of nerve function, but no abstract is available to show its numbers.⁵ A 2004 paper by the developers states that Cortagen had a pronounced therapeutic effect on recovery of injured peripheral nerves in humans, yet its abstract gives no supporting data, and no such clinical study could be found.³²⁰²² Peptides and healing and recovery places these results beside other compounds.

Brain and oxidative stress

In rat organ cultures, Cortagen stimulated the growth of brain cortex explants, the tissue its template came from.⁶ In rats with chronic brain ischemia, both Cortexin and Cortagen sped recovery of disturbed behavior and prevented excess lipid peroxidation and a fall in antioxidant activity in brain tissue.¹¹ In a 2007 rat study, injections of Cortagen or Epithalon lowered lipid peroxidation products and protein oxidation, alongside lower antioxidant activity, in serum and cerebral cortex.¹⁰ No study has tested Cortagen on memory or attention in people or in healthy animals, a gap covered on Peptides and focus and memory.²²

Genes, chromatin and immune cells

Five days of Cortagen injections in female CBA mice significantly changed the expression of 234 of 15,247 clones in the heart, matching 110 known genes, with maximum changes of +5.42 (up) and -2.86 (down).³ In lymphocytes from people aged 75 to 88, Cortagen and four related peptides activated ribosomal genes and loosened tightly packed chromatin.¹² A 2023 study found that Cortagen and three other peptides each acted on specific regions of chromosomes in such "old" chromatin.¹⁵ A developers' review reports that AEDP, like AEDG (Epithalon's sequence¹³), can push pluripotent cells toward epidermis, mesenchyme and nervous tissue.¹⁴

In immune cell tests Cortagen was weak: it had no co-mitogenic effect on mouse thymocytes, where Vilon had the strongest effect, and it raised interleukin-2 mRNA in mouse spleen cells less than Vilon or Epithalon did.⁸⁹ In chickens with the pituitary removed and in old birds, 40 days of Epithalon corrected anemia, immune and clotting changes, while Cortagen affected none of the measures.¹³

Human data

No published human trial of Cortagen appears in PubMed or on ClinicalTrials.gov.²²²⁰ The only human material is laboratory work on blood cells donated by elderly people.¹²¹⁵ Labs that need the compound can find Cortagen for sale as a freeze-dried research vial.

Side effects

Side effects in people are unknown, because no human trial has been published, and the animal study abstracts reviewed here do not report safety outcomes.²⁰²² That absence of data should not be read as evidence of safety.²³

• Health Canada, which named Cortagen among seized products, warns that unauthorized injectable peptides may cause infection, allergic reactions and other poor outcomes, may interact with other medicines, may contain high-risk ingredients or contaminants that are not listed on the label, and may not have been made or stored safely.¹⁷
• A 2026 review of gray-market peptides lists mislabeling, wrong potency, contamination, non-sterility and harmful impurities among the most immediate risks of products sold "for research use only", and notes that existing reporting systems may fail to detect harms from them.²⁴
• A 2026 review in Frontiers in Aging says Semax and Epitalon, two Russian peptides with decades of use there, lack independent validation and systematic safety surveillance through Western regulatory frameworks, and calls the absence of serious adverse events in the published Russian literature insufficient for conclusive safety determinations.²³

Dosage information

No human dose of Cortagen is established: it has no FDA label and no registered or published human trial.¹⁹²⁰²² The doses below come from animal studies; they describe those studies and are not doses for people.

Injection schedules for people that circulate on seller pages are not drawn from any published study or drug label.¹⁹²⁰²²

Reconstitution and storage

Each research vial holds freeze-dried Cortagen.²⁵ The supplier says to keep the unmixed vial in a refrigerator away from light, and to refrigerate a vial mixed with bacteriostatic water and use it within 30 days.²⁵ We found no published stability data for Cortagen in solution, so that window rests on the supplier alone.²⁵²²

Peptide makers add general rules that fit this sequence:

• Moisture: GenScript lists Glu and Asp among residues that absorb water from the air, and Cortagen has both, so the vial should stay tightly capped in a desiccator.²⁹ Bachem advises warming a cold container to room temperature in a desiccator before opening it.³⁰
• Solution life: GenScript names Asp among residues that shorten shelf life in solution. If a solution must be kept, it suggests a pH 5 to 6 buffer, single-use portions at -20 °C and no repeated freeze and thaw.²⁹
• Long-term storage: GenScript's general condition for freeze-dried peptides is -20 °C away from bright light, and Bachem gives below -15 °C, colder still for long periods.²⁹³⁰

The reconstitution guide gives the lab steps, the reconstitution calculator handles concentration math, and How to store peptides goes further on storage.

Regulatory status

Cortagen has no FDA approval, and as of October 2026 DailyMed holds no label for it.¹⁹ FDA's Category 2 list of compounding substances that may present significant safety risks does not include it, nor does that page's list of withdrawn nominations, as of the April 22, 2026 version.²¹ Federal rules let an unapproved new drug be shipped only for laboratory animal or test-tube research, labeled "Not for use in humans", with the shipper using due diligence that the buyer regularly does such research.²⁶

• Canada: Health Canada named Cortagen among unauthorized injectable peptide drugs seized from the online seller Canada Peptide in its August 1, 2025 advisory.¹⁷
• Sport: Cortagen is not named on WADA's 2026 Prohibited List, but class S0 bans at all times any pharmacological substance not covered elsewhere on the List that has no current approval by any government health authority for human therapeutic use.¹⁸ No approval for Cortagen was found anywhere, so athletes should treat it as possibly prohibited and check with their anti-doping organization.¹⁸¹⁹ WADA's 2027 list, in force from January 1, 2027, adds "peptides" to the S0 examples.²⁷²⁸

How Cortagen compares with related peptides

• Cortexin: a polypeptide extract of brain cortex, while Cortagen is one synthetic peptide modeled on its amino acid makeup.¹¹³
• Epithalon (Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly) differs from Cortagen only in the last amino acid, glycine in place of proline, yet only Epithalon changed blood, immune and clotting measures in pituitary-removed chickens.¹³
• Pinealon is the tripeptide Glu-Asp-Arg, listed by its developers for neuroprotection; no head-to-head study with Cortagen was found.⁷²²
• Cartalax (Ala-Glu-Asp) and Cardiogen (Ala-Glu-Asp-Arg) share Cortagen's first three amino acids.⁷
• Vilon, the dipeptide Lys-Glu, had the strongest effect on mouse thymocytes in a test where Cortagen had none.⁸