AOD-9604

The vial on this listing is the molecule that came out of Frank Ng's lab at Monash in the late 1990s and went on to become Metabolic Pharmaceuticals' lead clinical candidate. The internal development code was AOD, short for Anti-Obesity Drug, and the 9604 number followed the company's compound register. Chemically it is a sixteen-residue stretch lifted from the C-terminus of human Growth Hormone, positions 176 to 191, with an extra tyrosine tacked onto the N-terminus to keep serum exopeptidases from chewing through it as quickly as the native sequence does.

What makes it a fragment, not a hormone

This is the misread that creeps into most supplier copy. AOD-9604 is not human Growth Hormone, and it is not a GHRH analogue like Sermorelin or CJC-1295. It is a slice of hGH that retains none of the receptor-binding region. The original Metabolic Pharmaceuticals papers proposed that the C-terminal tail of hGH carried a separable lipolytic activity, working through a pathway distinct from the growth hormone receptor, so a synthetic copy could in theory drive fat mobilisation without the IGF-1 effects or the insulin resistance that complicate full hGH research. That hypothesis is the entire reason this molecule exists. Whether it survives current scrutiny is still a published-literature question, and any in vitro work on the peptide today usually sits inside that argument.

What sits inside the vial

• Mass: 5mg lyophilised peptide, white powder, sealed under inert gas
• Residue range: Tyr-(hGH 177-191), giving the published 16-residue length sometimes written as Tyr-hGH(176-191)
• Molecular formula: C78H123N23O23S2, approximately 1815 Da
• Purity: over 98% by reversed-phase HPLC, mass confirmed by ESI-MS on the same lot you receive
• Form: acetate salt, single-use rubber-stopper glass vial
• Origin: synthesised inside the UK and EU, never relabelled bulk from unverified offshore suppliers

The Phase 2b ending that most listings skip

Metabolic Pharmaceuticals ran AOD-9604 through a Phase 2b obesity trial that read out in 2007. The headline result was that the treatment arm did not separate from placebo on the primary weight endpoint, and the program was shelved soon after. That is a useful piece of context when reading the older preclinical adipocyte work, because in vitro lipolysis assays in 3T3-L1 cells and primary human adipocyte cultures had looked encouraging right up to the clinical readout. Researchers comparing fragment-driven lipid mobilisation against full-length hGH, hGH 177-191 without the N-terminal Tyr, or other GH-derived fragments still cite this molecule as the benchmark.

Where the bench work usually happens

Published assays using AOD-9604 cluster in adipocyte models. Glycerol release into the culture medium, perilipin phosphorylation readouts, comparator runs against isoproterenol-stimulated lipolysis. The Tyr stabilisation gives a usable plasma half-life in animal models, which is why some of the published rodent obesity work survived long enough to make it to the clinic in the first place. None of that activity is replicated in receptor-binding assays for the GH receptor, which is the reason it stops being called a growth hormone analogue once you are inside the literature.

Sourcing, paperwork, and what to expect at delivery

Every batch is run through HPLC and verified by mass spectrometry before the lot is released, and the CoA travels in the box with the vial. If a batch falls short of the printed spec, send the photograph through live chat and a refund clears the same shift. Around nine in ten UK orders are with the buyer inside 48 hours because shipping leaves a UK warehouse rather than a customs queue. The chat line is staffed by people during UK office hours, and bulk pricing on ten vials or more is quoted per lot through that channel rather than a fixed cart discount.

Sold strictly for in vitro laboratory research. Not for human or veterinary use. UK 18+.