HMG Menotropins
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.
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For research use only. Not for human or veterinary use.
What HMG Menotropins is
The plain-language version, first.
Two hormone activities in one preparation, measured in units rather than milligrams.
Human menopausal gonadotropin, also called menotropins, is not a single molecule but a mixture registered by the FDA with luteinizing hormone and follitropin as required components under CAS number 61489-71-2, and it therefore has no assignable molecular formula or molecular weight. Potency is defined by bioassay in International Units, with FSH activity determined by ovarian weight gain in female rats and LH activity determined by seminal vesicle weight gain in male rats, both standardised against the Fourth International Standard.
The sourcing story sounds like a joke and is real industrial biochemistry.
After menopause, the pituitary produces large amounts of FSH and LH, and the kidneys pass them into urine. Collect that urine at scale, purify it, and you have human menopausal gonadotropin.
Menotropins, standardised not by mass but by international units of FSH and LH activity per vial. It is a preparation, not a peptide.
This is old-school biologics manufacturing, the same era of thinking that once harvested insulin from pancreases.
And unlike nearly everything else on this shelf with a strange origin, HMG's pharmaceutical versions remain approved and marketed in Canada today.
A urine-derived hormone preparation with live regulatory approvals. This shelf contains stranger sentences, but not many.
hmg menotropins FSH and LH activity
Mechanism studied, not outcome promised.
Theca cells answer LH by making androgens. Granulosa cells answer FSH by aromatising those androgens into oestrogen. Neither one finishes alone, which is the whole argument for a preparation carrying both activities.
The FSH receptor and the LH receptor are both GPCRs coupled to Gs. Ligand binds, cyclic AMP goes up, protein kinase A gets to work. Textbook signalling with no controversy in it.
Potency is a bioassay result rather than a weight. FSH by ovarian weight gain in female rats, LH by seminal vesicle weight gain in male rats, both against the Fourth International Standard. That's why no molecular weight appears on this page.
Both pituitary gonadotropins at once, from the most honest source imaginable.
Two hormones, one preparation, both aimed at the gonads.
FSH drives follicle development and sperm production support. LH triggers ovulation and drives testosterone synthesis. HMG supplies both activities together.
It enters the chain of command below GnRH: rather than asking the pituitary to signal, it delivers the pituitary's signals directly.
Which is exactly why fertility medicine uses it, in controlled protocols, with monitoring, because delivering both gonadotropins at once is a powerful and blunt instrument.
Here's the honest part about a units-based extract.
Standardised activity is not identical composition. Batch consistency is what the approved manufacturers are actually selling, and it is the hardest part of the product.
The research so far for HMG Menotropins
Where the evidence is thin, we say so.
A US biologics licence for Menopur under BLA 021663 from October 2004, and Health Canada DIN 02283093 from Ferring, marketed, prescription and Schedule D. An FDA substance registration classifying menotropins as a mixture of luteinizing hormone and follitropin under CAS 61489-71-2. Decades of assisted reproduction practice built on standardised urinary gonadotropins.
A molecular formula, a molecular weight, or any way to characterise this material by mass. There's also no clean separation from hCG, since the Menopur label states hCG is detected in the product, and both hCG and LH are named in section S2.2.1 of the WADA Prohibited List in males.
Menotropins is registered by the FDA as a substance of class mixture, with luteinizing hormone and follitropin both flagged as must be present, under CAS 61489-71-2. No single molecular formula or molecular weight can be assigned to it, which forces every quantitative statement about the product through biological assay rather than gravimetry. The Menopur label specifies 75 IU of FSH activity and 75 IU of LH activity per vial, with FSH potency determined by ovarian weight gain in female rats, LH potency determined by seminal vesicle weight gain in male rats, and both calibrated against the Fourth International Standard. That method carries a direct consequence for identity. Two preparations matched on stated IU need not be matched on protein content, glycoform distribution or trace constituents, and the label itself records that human chorionic gonadotropin is detected in Menopur. For anti-doping purposes that is the operative fact, since chorionic gonadotrophin and luteinizing hormone are both named in section S2.2.1 of the WADA Prohibited List in males, even though menotropins as such is not named anywhere on it.
Decades of real fertility medicine behind the approved versions.
Real medicine lives here: decades of fertility practice, established protocols, live approvals in Canada and elsewhere.
That clinical file belongs to the approved pharmaceutical products, manufactured under GMP, used under specialist supervision with lab monitoring.
The gap between that and a research vial is wider here than almost anywhere on this shelf, because the product is an extract where manufacturing control is everything.
Prohibited in sport for men, explicitly.
A legitimate, living branch of medicine on one side, and a research-material market borrowing its bibliography on the other. Know which side of that line whatever you are reading was written about.
HMG menotropins · lyophilised powder · sealed vial · Canadian stock, ships from BC
HMG Menotropins specs
The chemistry, exactly as released.
Who studies HMG Menotropins
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.
Reproductive biology labs
Work on follicular development and the two cell two gonadotropin model, where having both FSH and LH activity in one preparation is the point rather than an impurity.
Glycoprotein hormone chemistry
Groups studying alpha and beta subunit pairing, glycoform heterogeneity, or how sugar chains on these hormones change clearance and receptor behaviour.
Bioassay and standardisation
Anybody working on potency measurement itself, where menotropins is the textbook case of a product whose strength has to be defined by biological response instead of mass.
Immunoassay development
Method work that has to deal with the shared alpha subunit across LH, FSH and hCG, which is the reason cross reactivity in gonadotropin assays is a permanent design problem.
Sold for laboratory research only. This is not guidance for personal use, and nothing here is a recommendation.
HMG Menotropins backstory
How it got here.
The origin story here is genuinely strange, so take the detour. Postmenopausal women excrete gonadotropins in their urine at levels far above premenopausal ones, because the ovaries stop answering and the pituitary keeps shouting anyway.
In the fifties and sixties that turned human urine into an industrial raw material. Collection programmes ran at real scale, most famously in Italy, and the extracts became the first gonadotropin therapies anybody had.
Recombinant DNA was supposed to end all of that. Recombinant FSH showed up in the nineties, made in engineered cells, consistent lot to lot, no donors involved.
The general assumption was that urinary products would be gone within a decade. They're still here.
Menopur holds a current Canadian DIN in 2026 and the label still says extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women. Whatever the mixture does in a real ART cycle, it kept doing it well enough that the biotech version never managed to push it off the shelf.
- 1
Urine as a raw material
Postmenopausal urine carries high gonadotropin levels because the pituitary keeps signalling into an ovary that stopped answering. Collecting it at scale produced the first gonadotropin therapies anyone had.
- 2
2004, the biologics licence
Menopur clears FDA under BLA 021663 in October, as a biologic rather than a drug, because a mixture defined by bioassay was never going to fit the small molecule pathway.
- 3
Recombinant didn't finish it off
Engineered cell lines were supposed to retire urinary gonadotropins in the nineties. Twenty odd years on, Menopur still holds a Canadian DIN and the label still says urine.
Buying HMG Menotropins 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.
There's no molecular weight, and that's not an omission
Menotropins is a mixture rather than a compound, so nobody can give you a formula or a mass for it. Any vendor printing a molecular weight for HMG is telling you something about their sourcing, not about the material.
It's a Schedule D biologic here, and this isn't that
Menopur carries DIN 02283093 in Canada, prescription and Schedule D. What ships from us is a research reagent for laboratory use. Not the licensed biologic, not lot released against an international standard, and not sold for use in people or animals.
Ships domestic
Stock sits in British Columbia and orders leave from there, so there's no border in the middle of the trip. Lyophilised powder in a sealed vial.
Stuff people ask about HMG Menotropins
If your question is not here, email us. Real human answers.
Human menopausal gonadotropin, also called menotropins. It's a preparation rather than a molecule, extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women, carrying both follicle stimulating hormone activity and luteinising hormone activity. The FDA registers it as a mixture with LH and follitropin both required present, under CAS 61489-71-2. That's exactly why no chemical formula appears anywhere on this page.
Because there's nothing to weigh in the singular. Menotropins contains two different glycoprotein hormones plus whatever else survives purification, and each of those hormones exists as a family of glycoforms rather than one fixed structure. Assigning a molecular weight would mean inventing one. Potency gets defined by bioassay in International Units instead, which is the honest measurement.
In animals. FSH activity is determined by ovarian weight gain in female rats, and LH activity by seminal vesicle weight gain in male rats, both standardised against the Fourth International Standard. The Menopur label states 75 IU of each activity per vial. So the number printed on the box describes a biological effect rather than a quantity of protein.
Yes, in 2026. The Menopur label describes a preparation of gonadotropins with FSH and LH activity, extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women. Recombinant FSH arrived in the nineties and was widely expected to retire the urinary products within a decade. It didn't happen. Menopur still holds Health Canada DIN 02283093 and it's still marketed.
Not by name, and the accurate version matters here. WADA section S2.2.1 names luteinizing hormone and chorionic gonadotrophin, both prohibited in males. The Menopur label states that human chorionic gonadotropin is detected in Menopur. So a urinary HMG carries a named prohibited substance as a detectable constituent, even though the abbreviation HMG itself never appears on the list.
Lyophilised menotropin powder in a sealed vial, sold as a research reagent for laboratory use only. Not the licensed biologic, not released against an international standard, and not for human or veterinary use. Stock sits in British Columbia and orders go out domestically, so nothing waits at a border on the way to you.
Good pairing options with HMG Menotropins
What researchers stack alongside it.
Pairing is where research gets ahead of itself. These are the compounds researchers put in the same order as HMG Menotropins, 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.
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.
Nobody publishes what is actually in this. No sequence, no PEG weight, no pharmacokinetic study exists for the thing sold under this name. That is not a gap in the research, it is a gap in the product.
Order HMG Menotropins right now
One last look before you decide.
Freeze-dried, COA on the page, ships cold
If you are researching HMG Menotropins 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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