Metabolic & endocrine · Growth hormone axis
AOD-9604
A growth-hormone fragment marketed for fat loss whose own obesity trials failed to establish a benefit.
- How settled this rating is:
- very-low confidence in the current evidence rating
- Routes studied:
- Not established · Subcutaneous injection, Oral, Topical (marketed but never approved)
- Also known as:
- hGH fragment 176-191 analogue, anti-obesity drug 9604
- Last reviewed:
- 2026-09-06
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Evidence passport
AOD-9604
A one-screen evidence identity for this compound. These fields describe research maturity, confidence and legal status. They are not a safety guarantee, efficacy percentage or recommendation.
- Evidence level
- L2Animal / lab studies
- Confidence
- Very low confidence in rating
- Regulatory status
- Not approved for this use
- Development status
- Discontinued — efficacy
Evidence strength
Higher = more and better-quality human evidence. It does not mean the effect is bigger or that the compound works for you.
Higher = more mature, better-documented human safety data. It does not mean the compound is safer than one with a lower number.
The 0-100 values rate the strength and maturity of evidence, not how effective or safe the compound is.
- Evidence base
- Mostly animal and laboratory research
- Furthest established stage
- Phase II
- Human research maturity
- Reached Phase 2b in obesity; development discontinued without an established benefit
- Source curation
- Sources fully curated
Routes recorded
Most of this evidence comes from animals and cells
Overview
Higher = more and better-quality human evidence. It does not mean the effect is bigger or that the compound works for you.
Higher = more animal, tissue or cell research. Preclinical results are a starting point, not proof of a human benefit.
Higher = more mature, better-documented human safety data. It does not mean the compound is safer than one with a lower number.
How to read these scores
Every number here rates the evidence, not the compound. They are editorial 0-100 strength ratings, not percentages, and not a rating out of five stars.
- Human efficacy evidence strength — Higher = more and better-quality human evidence. It does not mean the effect is bigger or that the compound works for you.
- Preclinical evidence strength — Higher = more animal, tissue or cell research. Preclinical results are a starting point, not proof of a human benefit.
- Human safety evidence strength — Higher = more mature, better-documented human safety data. It does not mean the compound is safer than one with a lower number. A score of 80 does not mean “80% safe”.
- Evidence level (L0-L5) — the strongest type of study behind the compound, from anecdote (L0) to large replicated human trials (L5). It is a description of the study evidence, not a quality, safety or recommendation rating.
- Confidence — how likely we think it is that this rating changes as new research lands. Low confidence means the picture is unsettled, not that the compound is bad.
None of these ratings is medical advice, a safety guarantee, or a recommendation to use anything. How we grade evidence.
How far human research has progressed: Reached Phase 2b in obesity; development discontinued without an established benefit
Routes & formulations
Marketed / research routes — never approved
Marketed as injections, oral or sublingual preparations and topical products. None of these is an approved formulation, and none has established human efficacy.
Route availability is not evidence of efficacy, and evidence from one route does not transfer to another. The Registry never provides dosing or sourcing information.
Peptide lifecycle
Discovery
Preclinical
Phase I
Phase II
Development stopped here — a programme status, not a safety verdict.
Phase III
Approved
This is a genuine dark-peptide case: it was developed as a pharmaceutical, tested in obesity, and did not establish a meaningful weight-loss benefit. Development did not continue to Phase 3.
Why development stopped: Did not meet endpoints. Trials failed to show the benefit they were designed to detect.
Last documented development: Historic Phase 2b obesity programme; no current approved development established
What it is
A modified fragment corresponding to the C-terminal region of human growth hormone, designed in the hope of separating fat metabolism effects from growth hormone's other actions.
What people claim
- Targeted fat loss without growth hormone side effects
- Works because it is 'the fat-loss part of HGH'
- Cartilage and joint repair
What the evidence actually says
The popular explanation — it is the fat-burning piece of growth hormone, so it must burn fat — is exactly the kind of mechanism story this site exists to interrogate. When the molecule was actually tested in people with obesity, the programme did not establish a meaningful weight-loss benefit, and development stopped. Being derived from a hormone fragment is not evidence of an effect; it is a hypothesis that was tested and did not pay off.
Related evidence
Useful next reads based on this compound — not recommendations.
- Related compound
Tesamorelin evidence profile
An approved medicine for one specific indication, routinely marketed for a much broader one.
- Compare
Compare AOD-9604 vs Tesamorelin evidence
Same questions, same fields, side by side — including how much human evidence exists.
- Checked claim
Claim review: “Peptides that raise growth hormone will build muscle in healthy adults.”
A closely related claim we have graded, from Growth hormone axis.
- Context
Discontinued & Abandoned Peptides
Why programmes stop or stall — and why neither status is automatically a safety verdict.
Human evidence
- Historic Phase 2b obesity development did not establish a meaningful weight-loss benefit versus placebo.
- FDA compounding material notes limited safety information for the substance.
- No credible human trial supports the joint, cartilage or body-recomposition claims made for it online.
Preclinical evidence
- Rodent work reported effects on lipolysis and fat metabolism that were not reproduced as clinical benefit in humans.
Animal and cell findings are Level 1–2 evidence.
Mechanism and pathways
- Proposed lipolytic activity independent of the growth hormone receptor — a hypothesis, not an established human mechanism.
- Fragment-of-a-hormone reasoning does not predict a clinical effect; fragments frequently do nothing useful.
Safety and unknowns
- No systematic long-term human safety dataset exists.
- Regulatory review material notes limited safety information.
- Unapproved supply carries the usual purity, sterility and identity risks, which are separate from the pharmacology.
Cancer relevance
This section covers questions raised by how the compound works in the body, plus anything regulators and trial teams keep an eye on. It is not a statement that this compound causes cancer — for most compounds here, no human data exist in either direction.
No established human signal
Regulatory status
Regulatory decisions apply to specific jurisdictions, products, formulations and indications. An approval elsewhere is not automatically an approval in your country.
Check the regulatory note and linked primary sources for jurisdiction-specific details.
Not an approved medicine for weight loss or anything else in any major region. FDA compounding material notes limited safety information. It is sold widely as a research chemical and heavily discussed in fat-loss communities. It is also prohibited in sport.
Evidence grade
Documented compound-specific animal or laboratory outcome findings, without qualifying human evidence for the assessed benefit.
What would change our rating?
- A properly controlled human trial with a clinically meaningful weight or body-composition endpoint.
- Any regulator identifying an adequate safety dataset.
References and sources
Source transparency
A provenance snapshot of this profile. Counts show what kinds of sources are cited, not how much scientific weight each source deserves.
- Last editorial review
- 2026-09-06
- Recently reviewed · 45 days ago
- Linked curated sources
- 2
- Sources still pending
- 0
- External specialist reviews
- 0
- None recorded for this profile
Review provenance
Registry editorial review: Colin Jackson-White, creator and editor, who is not a doctor or clinician. External specialist review is credited only when a named reviewer has completed a review of this exact profile.
Literature-discovery and AI tools may help locate or challenge candidate evidence, but they are not counted as evidence sources here. Registry judgements are tied to the underlying papers, trial records, regulator documents and official study records.
- Regulatory / labelFDA — bulk drug substances for compounding that may present significant safety risks
- Peer-reviewedPeer-reviewed review of unregulated peptide self-administration patterns (2026), PubMed PMID 42395176PMID: 42395176
Source hierarchy: regulatory documents and trial registries first, peer-reviewed work next, sponsor material flagged as non-independent. We never use supplier or clinic marketing as evidence, and where a verified source has not yet been curated we say so rather than inventing one.
Evidence change history
These entries record changes to our assessment of the published evidence — not changes to the compound itself.
No recorded changes yet. Baseline position set on 2026-09-06.