GHRH Peptide
The parent molecule of half this shelf. Forty-four residues built in the hypothalamus, and DPP-4 takes it apart in minutes, which is why every analogue downstream of it exists.
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For research use only. Not for human or veterinary use.
What GHRH Peptide is
The plain-language version, first.
The original. Every analogue in this category is an argument with this molecule.
GHRH (somatoliberin) is a 44 amino acid hypothalamic releasing hormone, UniProt P01286, that binds the GHRH receptor on anterior pituitary somatotrophs to stimulate growth hormone synthesis and secretion. It is cleaved by DPP-4 at the Ala2-Asp3 bond, giving a circulating half-life of minutes, and no GHRH(1-44) product is approved for marketing in Canada or the United States.
Every modified GHRH analogue on this shelf is a complaint about this molecule.
Too fragile. Clears too fast. Needs a substitution here, a fatty acid there.
This is the unmodified original they are all complaining about. Forty-four residues, exactly as your hypothalamus writes it.
It was isolated in the early eighties, and here is the odd part of that story: it was first pulled not from a brain but from a pancreatic tumour that happened to be producing it in quantity.
Endocrinology is full of discoveries that arrived through the side door.
The reference molecule for an entire category, sold in its original, fragile, minutes-long form.
What GHRH peptide actually is
Mechanism studied, not outcome promised.
The GHRH receptor is largely confined to pituitary somatotrophs. That narrow distribution is why GHRH doesn’t carry the appetite, cortisol or prolactin effects reported with GHS-R1a agonists.
DPP-4 cleaves GHRH between alanine 2 and aspartate 3, and the remaining fragment is inactive. That is why the circulating half-life is measured in minutes, and why every analogue in the family defends that one bond.
Bowers and colleagues reported in JCEM in 1990 (PMID 2108187) that a growth hormone releasing peptide plus GHRH released more GH together than either did alone. Two independent pathways, not one.
A pulse from the hypothalamus to the pituitary, timed on purpose.
Your body does not send this signal as a steady hum. It sends it in pulses, mostly at night, on a rhythm.
That is not sloppiness. The pulsing is information.
The pituitary reads the rhythm, not just the level. A drumbeat, not a drone.
GHRH binds its receptor on pituitary somatotrophs and each pulse asks for a release of growth hormone. Between pulses, silence, and the silence is part of the signal.
DPP-4 destroying the molecule in minutes is what makes the rhythm crisp. Fast destruction is a feature of pulse-based systems.
Here's the honest part. Because it clears so fast, the unmodified hormone is mostly a research reference rather than a practical tool.
Which is precisely its value. You cannot understand what the analogues changed without the thing they changed it from.
The research so far for GHRH Peptide
Where the evidence is thin, we say so.
The 1982 Science isolation from a human pancreatic tumour that had caused acromegaly (PMID 6812220). Bowers 1990 in JCEM (PMID 2108187), 18 normal men, showing GHRP and GHRH synergy. Decades of GHRH-based pituitary stimulation testing used to ask whether a pituitary can release growth hormone at all. Well-characterised chemistry: UniProt P01286, CAS 83930-13-6, and a documented DPP-4 cleavage site at Ala2-Asp3.
No approved GHRH(1-44) product exists anywhere, including Canada and the United States. There is no modern randomised outcome trial on the full-length peptide for body composition, sleep, recovery or ageing. The clinical trial record in this receptor family belongs to the analogues rather than the parent, and those results do not transfer across molecules.
Using the unmodified parent hormone as the reference point for its own stabilised analogues, and as the GHRH-receptor control against ghrelin-receptor secretagogues that reach the same output through a separate pathway.
Foundational endocrinology, and almost none of it about giving the hormone itself.
The literature here is enormous and it is almost all about the biology rather than the bottle.
GHRH's discovery and characterisation is foundational endocrinology. Receptor cloned, pathway mapped, pulsatility documented across decades.
Very little of that involved giving the native hormone as an intervention, because its half-life makes that impractical by design.
So this page's file is really the field's file. The molecule is the textbook, and the textbook is solid.
Nothing approved in this form. The approved things are its descendants.
The best-understood molecule on this shelf, and understood almost entirely as biology rather than as product. That is not a gap. That is what a reference standard looks like.
Full-length GHRH(1-44). Canadian stock, shipping from BC.
GHRH Peptide specs
The chemistry, exactly as released.
Who studies GHRH Peptide
Who tends to order this one, and why.
A research compound does not have one audience. It has a handful of rooms where the same question keeps coming up, and the question is a different question in each of them.
People mapping the two GH pathways
If you’re trying to work out why GHRH compounds and ghrelin receptor compounds behave so differently, GHRH is the clean reference on one side. Same downstream output, completely separate receptor and signalling route.
Analogue comparison work
Sermorelin, tesamorelin and CJC-1295 are all edits of this molecule. Having the unmodified parent on hand as a comparator is the only way to see what each modification actually bought.
Anyone tracing DPP-4 biology
GHRH is one of the cleanest textbook DPP-4 substrates, cleaved at a known bond into a known inactive fragment. It turns up in enzymology contexts that have nothing to do with growth hormone at all.
Readers who want primary literature
The GHRH record is old, specific and easy to verify. Named papers, named PMIDs, named authors, a UniProt entry. That is rarer in this category than it ought to be.
Sold for laboratory research only. This is not guidance for personal use, and nothing here is a recommendation.
GHRH Peptide backstory
How it got here.
1982 is the year, and the address is the strange part. A growth hormone releasing factor had been a hypothesis since the 1960s.
Everybody agreed the hypothalamus had to be making something that told the pituitary to release GH, because you could watch the effect happen. Nobody could isolate enough of it from brain tissue to sequence it.
Hypothalamic peptides sit at absurdly low concentrations. You'd process thousands of animal brains to end up with a few micrograms and a headache.
Then the break came from an organ nobody was looking at. Patients with acromegaly whose pituitaries looked more or less innocent, but whose pancreatic tumours were quietly pumping out a growth hormone releasing factor.
Guillemin's group at the Salk took one of those tumours, pulled the 44 amino acid sequence out of it, made a synthetic copy and showed it worked. Science, 1982.
So the hypothalamic hormone got formally characterised from a tumour in an organ it has no business being in. That's the sort of thing that only really happens in endocrinology.
What followed was fast. Once you have a sequence you can make analogues, and once you know DPP-4 is the weak point you know exactly what to armour.
Sermorelin, the 1-29 fragment, showed up first. Tesamorelin picked up an FDA approval in 2010.
CJC-1295 went after the problem with an albumin anchor. The parent stayed in the lab while its edits went out and built careers.
- 1
1982, Science, and a pancreatic tumour
Guillemin’s Salk Institute group isolated the 44 amino acid sequence from a human pancreatic tumour that had caused acromegaly, then synthesised a replica and showed it was fully active (PMID 6812220).
- 2
Six years behind the GHRPs
The growth hormone releasing peptides were discovered in 1976. GHRH was not isolated until 1982. The field had a working synthetic secretagogue before it had the natural hormone that secretagogue was supposedly imitating.
- 3
The edits outgrew the original
Sermorelin, tesamorelin and the CJC compounds are all stabilised rewrites of this sequence. Tesamorelin carries an FDA approval. GHRH(1-44) itself has never been marketed as a drug anywhere.
Buying GHRH Peptide in Canada
What ships, how fast, and the paperwork.
The hard part of buying research material is almost never the compound. It is the logistics. What leaves the building, how fast it moves, and what is in the box beside the vial. Here is ours, plainly.
GHRH(1-44) is not sermorelin
Sermorelin is GHRH(1-29), a shorter fragment. Tesamorelin adds a trans-3-hexenoyl group to that fragment. CJC-1295 with DAC adds four substitutions plus an albumin anchor. Four different molecules with four different data sets. Check which one a claim was actually measured on before you accept it.
Supplied for laboratory research use only
This is a research chemical. It is not a drug, a supplement or a therapy, and it is not intended for human or veterinary use. In Canada, peptides are generally regulated as prescription drugs, and Health Canada has stated that "for research use only" labelling does not make a product legal.
Prohibited in sport at all times
The WADA 2026 Prohibited List covers GHRH and its analogues under S2.2.4 as a non-Specified substance, banned both in and out of competition. For anyone in a tested pool, this category is not ambiguous.
Stuff people ask about GHRH Peptide
If your question is not here, email us. Real human answers.
No. Sermorelin is GHRH(1-29), the first 29 amino acids of this sequence, sold as a shorter and more practical fragment. GHRH(1-44) is the full-length natural hormone, UniProt P01286. They act on the same receptor, but the published human data sits mostly with the analogues, and results measured on one should never be quoted as if they came from the other.
Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 cleaves it between alanine 2 and aspartate 3, and the GHRH(3-44) fragment left behind does not activate the receptor. That single cut gives a circulating half-life measured in minutes. It is also the reason every analogue in this family exists, each one defending that same bond by a different trick: a D-amino acid substitution, a shorter chain, or an albumin anchor.
Different receptor entirely. GHRH binds the GHRH receptor on pituitary somatotrophs. GHRP-2, GHRP-6, hexarelin and MK-677 bind GHS-R1a, the ghrelin receptor, which also carries appetite signalling and modest cortisol, ACTH and prolactin release. Bowers reported in 1990 that combining a GHRP with GHRH released more growth hormone than either alone, which is the standard evidence that the two pathways run independently.
No GHRH(1-44) product is marketed as a drug in Canada, the United States or anywhere else. Analogues in the same family did get approvals, most notably tesamorelin, cleared by the FDA in 2010. The parent hormone has featured in pituitary function testing, but it never became a marketed therapeutic product in its own right.
It is the formal endocrine name for GHRH, built the way other releasing hormones are named. Somato for growth hormone, liberin for releasing. You will see it on UniProt entry P01286 and throughout the older literature. Its counterpart is somatostatin, which does the opposite job and shuts growth hormone release down. Both are made in the hypothalamus and both act on the pituitary.
Yes. The WADA 2026 Prohibited List names growth hormone releasing hormone and its analogues under section S2.2.4, alongside CJC-1293, CJC-1295, sermorelin and tesamorelin. It is classed as non-Specified and prohibited at all times, meaning both in competition and out of it. Any athlete in a tested pool should treat the whole category as off limits.
Good pairing options with GHRH Peptide
What researchers stack alongside it.
Pairing is where research gets ahead of itself. These are the compounds researchers put in the same order as GHRH Peptide, which is a statement about ordering habits, not about evidence. Two things in one cart have not been studied together unless somebody studied them together.
Not a molecule. FSH and LH activity extracted from postmenopausal urine and standardised in international units. Still marketed in Canada in 2026, which makes it the rare extract with live approvals.
The unprocessed precursor, all 344 residues with the signal peptide still attached. The protein your body actually secretes is a different animal: 315 residues and 36 cysteines folded just so.
Order GHRH Peptide right now
One last look before you decide.
Freeze-dried, COA on the page, ships cold
If you are researching GHRH Peptide and you want a source you do not have to second-guess, start with the paperwork on this page. For research use only.
Not for human consumption. Not approved by Health Canada or any other regulatory body.
Page last updated August 19, 2026
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