Pinealon: the Glu-Asp-Arg tripeptide, and why it is not epitalon

The tripeptide Glu-Asp-Arg by its registry numbers, a comparison table of the short Khavinson-school peptides a buyer actually meets, and an honest count of what has been published about it.

By Touchstone PeptidesSeptember 23, 20268 minute read

Pinealon is a synthetic tripeptide, Glu-Asp-Arg, written EDR in one-letter code. PubChem carries it as CID 10273502: formula C15H26N6O8, average molecular weight 418.40, CAS 175175-23-2. It is not epitalon, a four-residue peptide with a different sequence, formula, mass and CAS number, and it is not epithalamin, which is not a defined peptide at all. What separates pinealon from its shelf neighbours is not chemistry but evidence: twenty-two indexed publications, most from one institute in one Russian-language journal, and no controlled trial.

What pinealon is

PubChem's record for CID 10273502 gives the identity a certificate has to match.

Sequence Glu-Asp-Arg, three residues, all L-configuration, one-letter code EDR
Written out H-Glu-Asp-Arg-OH, a free peptide with an unprotected N-terminal amine and a free C-terminal acid, no amidation and no acyl cap
Formula C15H26N6O8
Average molecular weight 418.40
CAS 175175-23-2
Other identifiers CHEBI:156374, DSSTox DTXSID601359159

Two of the three side chains are acidic, the glutamate and the aspartate, and the third is the strongly basic guanidine of arginine. PubChem lists "Pinealon acetate salt form" among its synonyms.

One identifier is missing. None of the 22 synonyms on that record is a UNII, the substance code FDA assigns in its Global Substance Registration System, and none was located for pinealon in the course of this work. That is an absence, not a proof: whether any FDA substance code exists is unverified here. The NCI CACTUS structure resolver also returns a 404 for the name "pinealon".

We list it twice: as Pinealon liquid spray and as a lyophilized powder sold as Pinealon, whose URL still carries the slug epithalon-pinealon from an older listing even though the vial holds the EDR tripeptide alone.

Pinealon vs epitalon, and the rest of the short peptides

Name	Sequence	PubChem CID	CAS	Formula	MW
Pinealon	Glu-Asp-Arg (EDR)	10273502	175175-23-2	C15H26N6O8	418.40
Epitalon	Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly (AEDG)	219042	307297-39-8 free base, 307297-40-1 acetate	C14H22N4O9	390.35
Vilon	Lys-Glu (KE)	7010502	45234-02-4	C11H21N3O5	275.30
Vesugen	Lys-Glu-Asp (KED)	no record under the name; KED is 87571363	204271-66-9, registered to KED, not to the name	C15H26N4O8	390.39
Prostamax	Lys-Glu-Asp-Pro (KEDP)	9848296	473578-47-1	C20H33N5O9	487.5

Two rows deserve a sentence.

"Vesugen" has no registry record under that name. A PubChem name lookup returns "No CID found". The tripeptide Lys-Glu-Asp does have a record, CID 87571363, and the word vesugen is absent from its nine synonyms; the trade name is tied to the structure in the primary literature, not in a registry. The CAS number to expect from a supplier is 204271-66-9, which belongs to the tripeptide, not to the brand.

KED and epitalon round to the same mass. Lys-Glu-Asp is 390.39 and Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly is 390.35, so on a certificate printing a rounded figure those are one number, and only the formulas separate them: C15H26N4O8 against C14H22N4O9. A molecular weight near 390 is not an identity claim. Pinealon, at 418.40, is at least unambiguous by mass in this group. Vilon is the outlier by length, and the short end of the shelf is covered in The two-residue peptides.

Why the names get tangled

FDA has stated plainly that two of these names are different substances:

The nominators stated that other common names for epitalon include epithalamin(e); however, FDA considers epitalon and epithalamin as different substances. Epithalamin is a polypeptide complex extracted from the pineal gland.FDA briefing document, FDA Evaluation of Epitalon-Related Bulk Drug Substances, May 12, 2026

The registry does not agree with itself. PubChem's record for epitalon, CID 219042, lists Epithalamin and Epithalamine among its synonyms and carries a second CAS number, 64082-79-7, alongside the tetrapeptide's own 307297-39-8. A record for a synthetic four-residue peptide is therefore also serving as the record for an animal-derived extract that FDA says is something else. The confusion is propagated by the reference data everyone downstream copies, not by vendor copy alone. The spellings epitalon, epithalon and epithalone are a smaller matter, and the naming history sits in Epithalon, epitalon and the word bioregulator.

Pinealon is not part of that conflation chemically. It gets pulled in by the phrase "pineal peptide", a marketing umbrella rather than a chemical term. New Zealand's Medsafe uses it as a class heading: "Key pineal gland peptides (and their analogues) include epitalon and epithalamin." Pinealon is not in that sentence.

What the pinealon literature actually is

A PubMed search for "pinealon" run on September 23, 2026 returns 22 records, all time. For comparison, "epitalon OR epithalon" returns 143, "epithalamin" 102, "vilon peptide" 74, "Glu-Asp-Arg" 48, "vesugen" 27 and "prostamax" 6. Only four of the 22 carry the word pinealon in the title.

The 22 are concentrated:

12 of 22 are in Advances in Gerontology (Uspekhi Gerontologii), a Russian-language gerontology journal; PubMed brackets those titles, its convention for an article not in English.
8 of 22 list Vladimir Khavinson, the founding author of the programme, among the authors.
Most of the remainder come from a second Russian group in the same journal, often with a co-author at the St Petersburg institute that supplied the peptide.
2 of 22 are false positives, matched on sequence letters or picked up by a broad peptide review.

What kind of work it is matters as much as how much there is. Pinealon has been investigated in cultured cells, including cerebellar granule cells, neutrophils and PC12 pheochromocytoma cells in a 2011 paper in Rejuvenation Research; in organotypic cultures; in DNA-binding and molecular-docking studies; and in rodent models of hypoxia and of methionine-loaded pregnancy. The one review, in Molecules in 2020, stays hedged: the peptide "is assumed to enter cells and bind to histone proteins and/or ribonucleic acids".

There is no randomised controlled trial of pinealon in the indexed record. The human-adjacent material is observational and occupational, published in Russian, on groups such as professional drivers and locomotive crews. Several of those reports give pinealon together with Cortexin, a porcine brain extract, so whatever was measured cannot be attributed to the tripeptide on its own.

Indexing adds a caveat. The single English-language rodent paper sits in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, whose NLM Catalog record, NLM ID 101471010, shows a current indexing status of N: the National Library of Medicine no longer indexes that journal for MEDLINE. The two Russian journals are indexed, but both publish the originating group and its collaborators.

The contrast with epitalon is the useful one. Epitalon now has at least one primary study from a group with no connection to St Petersburg, a 2025 paper in Stem Cell Reviews and Reports by an Italian team in ARPE-19 retinal cells. Pinealon has no equivalent in the 22 records.

Where pinealon stands in United States federal text

Status as of September 23, 2026.

Search	Finding
Federal Register documents naming pinealon	0
Federal Register documents naming Glu-Asp-Arg	0
FDA warning letters naming pinealon	0
FDA warning letters naming epitalon	0
FDA warning letters naming epithalon	1
Pinealon on any FDA bulk substances list	not listed, never nominated
United States approval, USP or NF monograph	none

Pinealon appears nowhere in United States federal regulatory text. A Federal Register query for the term returns zero documents, as does one for Glu-Asp-Arg, and a full-text search of FDA's warning-letter index returns zero records.

The one letter that does exist is easy to overstate. FDA issued a warning letter to GenoGenix LLC on January 20, 2026 in which Epithalon appears as an example product under four labelling deficiencies at an outsourcing facility, among them a missing facility name and address and a missing ingredient list. It cites labelling and facility provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It does not name epithalon as a prohibited ingredient, and it is not a ruling about the molecule.

Nothing in it concerns pinealon, which has never been nominated, evaluated or named in the Federal Register. Neither pinealon nor epitalon has a United States Pharmacopeia or National Formulary monograph, and neither is a component of an FDA-approved drug.

What a thin literature means for the documentation

Pinealon is the case of a compound well defined chemically and sparsely covered scientifically. Those two things are independent, and only one is something a buyer can check on arrival.

The identity side is checkable. A registry entry exists, so there is an external reference for what the material should be: formula C15H26N6O8, average mass 418.40, a free tripeptide with no cap and no amide. Mass spectrometry separates EDR from AEDG and from KED without ambiguity, which a rounded molecular weight on a label does not. What to look for on the report, and how to confirm the laboratory that issued it, is in Checking a peptide lab report; why the lot number is the only thing tying that report to the vial is in What a lot number is for.

No certificate speaks to the evidence side. The paperwork answers what is in the vial; the published record, thin as it is, answers what has been studied. We publish the first, describe the second, and publish no guidance on use.

Sources

For laboratory research use only. Not a drug, not a supplement, and nothing here is a claim about what any of this material does in a person or an animal.

Two things before you come in.