Ipamorelin Peptide
The polite one. A Novo Nordisk ghrelin agonist defined by what it does not release: no meaningful cortisol or ACTH even at high doses, which is the entire reason anybody remembers it.
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For research use only. Not for human or veterinary use.
What Ipamorelin Peptide is
The plain-language version, first.
The GHRP family's finishing-school graduate, famous for restraint.
Ipamorelin is a synthetic pentapeptide, Aib-His-D-2-Nal-D-Phe-Lys-NH2, with molecular formula C38H49N9O5, molar mass 711.9 and CAS 170851-70-4, developed by Novo Nordisk under the code NNC 26-0161. It is a selective agonist at the growth hormone secretagogue receptor and was the first of its class shown not to raise cortisol, and Health Canada named it in its 9 April 2026 advisory on unauthorized injectable peptides sold online.
Every family has one member famous for manners.
The early GHRPs were effective and messy: they rang the growth hormone bell and also jangled cortisol, prolactin and appetite on the way through.
Ipamorelin, built at Novo Nordisk in the nineties, is defined by what it leaves alone: no meaningful ACTH or cortisol release, even at very high doses.
That selectivity finding is genuinely documented, in the company's own published pharmacology, and it is why this molecule survived in reputation while siblings faded.
Five residues, ghrelin receptor, minimal collateral.
The politest key in the family, remembered precisely for what it declined to touch.
What is ipamorelin?
Mechanism studied, not outcome promised.
Ipamorelin binds GHS-R1a, the ghrelin receptor. The GHRH analogues it gets grouped with bind something else entirely. Same axis, different inputs.
Human pharmacokinetics found a single growth hormone pulse peaking around 0.67 hours with a terminal half-life of roughly 2 hours. The effect is a discrete pulse, not a plateau.
Rings one bell without rattling the neighbours' windows.
Same ghrelin-receptor door as every GHRP, with unusual manners on entry.
The stress axis stays quiet: no meaningful cortisol or ACTH movement in the characterisation work, which for this family is the headline achievement.
Selectivity is pharmacology's hardest trick, and this molecule's version of it is real, published and replicated in kind.
A short half-life keeps its action pulse-like rather than continuous, the polar opposite of MK-677's approach two shelves over.
Here's the honest part, familiar by now.
Clean selectivity was established in pharmacology studies. What a clean pulse achieves in outcomes anybody cares about was never established, because the outcome trials were never run.
The research so far for Ipamorelin Peptide
Where the evidence is thin, we say so.
Receptor selectivity across the pituitary axis, and human pharmacokinetics from five escalating intravenous doses in eight healthy men per level, giving a terminal half-life around 2 hours.
The published phase 2 in postoperative ileus missed its primary endpoint at p equals 0.15, and a completed 320-patient dose-finding trial has never been published. All human dosing was intravenous.
Raun and colleagues, 1998: in conscious swine, ipamorelin released growth hormone without raising ACTH or cortisol significantly above plain GHRH stimulation, with no effect on FSH, LH, prolactin or TSH, holding at doses more than 200-fold above the ED50 for GH release. That is the compound defining property, and it is pig and rodent data rather than human data.
A real pharma pedigree, a clean selectivity story, and a familiar empty column.
The file has a pedigree most of this shelf lacks: real pharmaceutical characterisation by Novo Nordisk, published selectivity data, early clinical development.
Development went as far as early trials in a post-surgical setting and then stopped, for commercial reasons in the late nineties.
After that: silence. No outcome trials, no approval anywhere, a reputation carried forward on the strength of the selectivity paper alone.
Prohibited in sport, S2, like its whole family.
The best-behaved molecule in the GHRP family, with the same unfinished file as its rowdier siblings. Good manners are real. They are still not evidence.
Ipamorelin vial sizes and current Canadian stock are just below.
Ipamorelin Peptide specs
The chemistry, exactly as released.
Who studies Ipamorelin 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.
Neuroendocrinology
The ghrelin receptor and its place alongside GHRH and somatostatin in governing pituitary growth hormone release.
Gastroenterology
Postoperative ileus was the clinical indication both phase 2 trials targeted, on the basis of ghrelin effects on gut motility.
Peptide engineering
Three non-standard positions in a five residue molecule. Aib, two D-amino acids and a C-terminal amide, all working to keep a very short peptide intact.
Anti-doping laboratories
Ipamorelin is named in section S2.2.4 of the WADA 2026 list among growth hormone secretagogues, prohibited at all times.
Sold for laboratory research only. This is not guidance for personal use, and nothing here is a recommendation.
Ipamorelin Peptide backstory
How it got here.
Ghrelin was found backwards. Researchers had identified a receptor, the growth hormone secretagogue receptor, before anyone knew what bound it.
Synthetic compounds that activated it existed first, and the natural ligand was only isolated in 1999. The synthetic side of that story is the GHRP series, developed from work going back to the 1970s.
GHRP-6 and GHRP-2 were the useful early ones, and their limitation was that they were not clean. Ipamorelin came out of Novo Nordisk's effort to strip the series down.
Removing the central Ala-Trp dipeptide of GHRP-1 produced a shorter compound with a much narrower endocrine footprint, published by Raun and colleagues in 1998 as the first selective growth hormone secretagogue. Novo did not carry it forward.
Helsinn Therapeutics picked it up for a gut indication, ran two phase 2 trials, and the programme ended there.
- 1
A receptor before a ligand
The growth hormone secretagogue receptor was identified before anyone knew what bound it naturally. Synthetic activators existed first; ghrelin itself was isolated in 1999.
- 2
Stripping down the GHRPs
GHRP-6 and GHRP-2 worked but also raised ACTH and cortisol. Novo Nordisk removed the central Ala-Trp dipeptide of GHRP-1 and got a much narrower compound.
- 3
Into the clinic, for the gut
Helsinn Therapeutics ran two phase 2 trials in postoperative ileus, a sensible target given ghrelin role in gut motility.
Buying Ipamorelin 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.
Same day out of British Columbia
Our building, our cold packs, our people, and nothing sitting in a customs queue while you refresh a tracking page.
Then into the fridge
Keep it cold and keep it dark. Sealed and freeze-dried it handles a rough trip without ice. Once it lands, fridge.
Named on the WADA list
Section S2.2.4 of the 2026 Prohibited List names ipamorelin explicitly among growth hormone secretagogues and their mimetics, alongside ibutamoren and anamorelin. Prohibited at all times, in and out of competition, and non-specified.
Stuff people ask about Ipamorelin Peptide
If your question is not here, email us. Real human answers.
It releases growth hormone without meaningfully raising other pituitary hormones. Raun and colleagues reported in 1998 that in conscious swine it did not release ACTH or cortisol at levels significantly different from plain GHRH stimulation, with no effect on FSH, LH, prolactin or TSH, and that this held at doses more than 200-fold above the ED50 for growth hormone release. That selectivity is what distinguished it from GHRP-6 and GHRP-2.
No, and this is worth getting right. Ipamorelin binds GHS-R1a, the ghrelin receptor. CJC-1295 and sermorelin are GHRH analogues binding the GHRH receptor. They act at different points on the same axis through different receptors, so grouping them as growth hormone peptides obscures a real mechanistic difference.
Two phase 2 trials in postoperative ileus, run by Helsinn Therapeutics. The published one, Beck and colleagues 2014, analysed 114 patients and found time to tolerating a solid meal of 25.3 hours against 32.6 hours on placebo, p equals 0.15, which did not reach significance. A second dose-finding trial enrolled 320 patients and completed in 2014, and its results have never been posted or published.
Intravenous, in every published human study. The pharmacokinetic work used intravenous infusions and both phase 2 trials used intravenous dosing. There is no published human data for subcutaneous ipamorelin, which is the route it is generally used by outside research settings.
Not long. Human pharmacokinetics from Gobburu and colleagues in 1999, across five escalating intravenous dose levels with eight healthy men each, found a single growth hormone pulse peaking around 0.67 hours and a terminal half-life of approximately 2 hours. It produces a discrete pulse rather than sustained elevation.
Yes, by name. The WADA 2026 Prohibited List names ipamorelin in section S2.2.4 among growth hormone secretagogues and their mimetics, in the same bracket as anamorelin, capromorelin, ibutamoren and ghrelin itself. Prohibited at all times, in and out of competition, and classed as non-specified.
Good pairing options with Ipamorelin 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 Ipamorelin 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 Ipamorelin Peptide right now
One last look before you decide.
Freeze-dried, COA on the page, ships cold
If you are researching Ipamorelin 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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