Cartalax 20 mg

About Cartalax

Cartalax is a lab-made peptide of three amino acids: alanine, glutamic acid and aspartic acid (Ala-Glu-Asp, or AED).³ It belongs to the short "bioregulator" peptides from Vladimir Khavinson's group in St. Petersburg, Russia, which lists it as a regulator of cartilage and skin fibroblast function.³ This page offers Cartalax for sale as a 20 mg research vial, with stock for each shipping origin shown in the selector above.

The evidence base is small and comes almost entirely from that one group.⁴ PubMed indexes 6 records under Cartalax or its chemical name, all cell or tissue culture studies,⁴ and ClinicalTrials.gov lists no Cartalax trial.¹² Before you buy Cartalax for a study, read What is Cartalax? for the full study list, the proposed mechanism and the open safety questions.

Research highlights

• Aging human stem cells, cell culture (2023): AED at 200 ng/ml switched on cartilage-building genes and proteins (SOX9, aggrecan, type II collagen, COMP).⁷ A cartilage polypeptide complex needed 2,000 ng/ml for the same effect.⁷
• Aging cartilage cells, cell culture (2023): AED moved aging-linked molecules (p16, p21, p53, TNF-alpha, IL-1 alpha and Sirt1) back toward normal.⁶
• Aging human skin fibroblasts, cell culture (2020): AED raised production of sirtuin-1, sirtuin-6 and collagen I.⁸
• Rat kidney tissue, tissue culture (2015): AED, coded T-31, raised cell growth and lowered cell death, but less than a polypeptide complex from calf kidneys.²⁰
• Kidney cells, cell culture (2014): AED raised cell growth, lowered the aging markers p16, p21 and p53, and raised SIRT-6.⁹
• Thymus cells, cell culture (2011): T-31 did not show the broad anti-aging effect that another test peptide, AB-9, did.¹⁰
• Osteoarthritis, review statement (2023): the developer group reports "high efficacy" in animal models and in older patients taking it by mouth.⁵ We could not locate the primary studies.⁵

Regulatory status

Cartalax is not an FDA-approved drug: a search of FDA's approval data found no product with it as an active ingredient.¹³ It is not named on FDA's list of bulk substances nominated for compounding under section 503A (updated May 14, 2026).¹⁴ Health Canada's 2025 advisory on unauthorized injectable peptides names sister Khavinson peptides such as Livagen and Pinealon, though not Cartalax.¹⁵ It says injectable peptides are regulated as prescription drugs in Canada.¹⁵ WADA's 2026 list does not name Cartalax, but its class S0 bans at all times any substance not covered by the list's other sections that has no government approval for human therapeutic use.¹⁶ The 2027 list, in force from January 1, 2027, adds "peptides" to the S0 examples.¹⁷

Handling and storage

The supplier advises keeping a mixed vial cold and using it within 30 days.¹ That is the supplier's guidance, not published stability data.¹ GenScript says peptide solutions keep for a much shorter time than freeze-dried powder, especially when the sequence contains Asp, as Cartalax does.¹⁸ In the one published method we could read, researchers dissolved AED in phosphate-buffered saline before adding it to stem cell cultures.¹¹ Lab steps for mixing a freeze-dried vial are in the reconstitution guide. The reconstitution calculator works out the concentration from the vial amount and the diluent volume.