What is CJC-1295? One name, two different molecules

The name problem comes first

Before anything about evidence, you need to know which molecule someone is talking about. With CJC-1295 that's genuinely unclear, and the ambiguity is doing damage.

"CJC-1295" is used for two different compounds.

With DAC. The drug affinity complex is a modification that keeps the compound active far longer. This is the version our profile covers, listed under the aliases CJC-1295 with DAC and DAC:GRF.

Without DAC. A shorter-acting compound, and the same thing sold under the name Mod GRF 1-29.

Different durations, different behaviour, overlapping names. A forum post about "CJC-1295" often doesn't specify which, and the two aren't interchangeable.

Our own market shows the double-listing

Here's a concrete illustration from our price market, checked 25 July 2026.

Identical range, identical vendor count, two separate rows.

That's what one compound listed under two names looks like in market data. Nothing sinister about it, since both names are in genuine use, and it's a good demonstration of how naming confusion propagates through a market until you can't count what's actually being sold.

If you're shopping, the practical consequence is direct: check whether a listing says with DAC or without, because those are not the same purchase.

How it's thought to work

CJC-1295 is a GHRH-receptor agonist.

GHRH is growth-hormone-releasing hormone, the signal your hypothalamus sends to tell the pituitary to release growth hormone. CJC-1295 mimics that signal.

The DAC version's design prolongs exposure, so the GH and IGF-1 stimulation lasts longer than the natural pulse would.

Our profile summarises it as an unapproved long-acting GHRH analog studied in small healthy-volunteer trials.¹

What the trials actually showed, and what they didn't

This is the most useful thing on the page, and it's a distinction worth carrying to every peptide you look at.

Early trials demonstrated prolonged increases in growth hormone and IGF-1.

That's a real, measured, replicable finding. The compound does what its mechanism says it should. Blood levels of GH and IGF-1 go up and stay up.

They did not establish clinical benefit for fat loss, muscle gain, recovery, sleep, or longevity.

Both sentences are true at once, and the gap between them is the whole story.

GH and IGF-1 are surrogate markers. They're stand-ins for outcomes, chosen because they're easy to measure and because they're plausibly connected to the things people actually want.

Sometimes a surrogate holds up. Often it doesn't. Moving a number in a blood test is not the same as making someone better, and CJC-1295 is the clearest example we track of a compound that reliably does the first thing with no established evidence for the second.

We rate it low evidence with an early signal, in our research directory. That's a tier above the very-low compounds like BPC-157, precisely because the pharmacology is genuinely established. It just stops there.

More on this failure mode in why evidence maturity beats online momentum.

What the supply looks like

Our testing ledger holds one published lab record for CJC-1295 with DAC.³

One. A 5mg vial that measured 5.19mg at 99.288% purity, which is a tight result and tells you almost nothing about anything else on the market.

For the without-DAC version, we hold none at all.

Against that, 7 vendors list the without-DAC compound and more list the DAC version. A single certificate cannot describe a market, and this is among the thinnest evidence bases of anything we track.

When a seller does show you a certificate, check which molecule it names. A COA for the DAC version says nothing about a non-DAC vial, and our vendor checklist covers what else to look for.

Where CJC-1295 sits

Know which molecule you're reading about. With DAC and without DAC are different compounds, and the without-DAC one has a second name.

The pharmacology is real. It raises GH and IGF-1, durably, and that's been measured.

The benefits are not established. No clinical benefit for fat loss, muscle, recovery, sleep, or longevity, which covers essentially everything it's marketed for.

The supply is barely documented. One lab record for one of the two versions.

Marketing that presents a rise in growth hormone as though it were a proven result is exactly the kind of unsupported health claim regulators police.²

Next: ipamorelin, the compound it's most often stacked with. Profile with graded outcomes and sources: CJC-1295.