Pinealon: Research Reference

Pinealon is a synthetic tripeptide, Glu-Asp-Arg, often written EDR, developed by Vladimir Khavinson’s group in Saint Petersburg as one of a family of short regulatory peptides. At three residues and five charged groups it is one of the smallest and most water-soluble peptides in research catalogues, and it is studied in cell and animal models of oxidative stress in nerve cells.

This reference collects what a laboratory needs to know about Pinealon as a material: how its three residues behave in the vial, what it dissolves in, how it is handled at the bench and what to do when an order arrives. Each section below has its own page.

Molecular reference

Name	Pinealon
Also known as	EDR peptide, Glu-Asp-Arg, L-glutamyl-L-aspartyl-L-arginine
Sequence	H-Glu-Asp-Arg-OH (EDR; free N-terminal amine and C-terminal acid)
Residues	3
Molecular formula	C15H26N6O8
Molecular weight	418.4 g/mol
CAS number	175175-23-2

Formula, molecular weight, CAS number and synonyms are from PubChem (CID 10273502). The same formula, weight, CAS number and sequence appear on the MedChemExpress data sheet for Pinealon (HY-P4052).

Three features of that sequence explain most of its behaviour. It has no methionine, cysteine, tryptophan, tyrosine, histidine, asparagine or glutamine, so the oxidation and deamidation routes that limit many peptides are absent, and with no aromatic ring light is a minor concern. Its first residue is a free glutamic acid, which can slowly close into a ring called pyroglutamic acid (Chelius et al., Analytical Chemistry, 2006). And its middle residue is aspartic acid, which can isomerise through a ring intermediate; the bonds on either side of an aspartate, here Glu-Asp and Asp-Arg, can also be hydrolysed, faster in acid (Oliyai and Borchardt, Pharmaceutical Research, 1993 and 1994). Both are slow reactions that need water and are slowed by cold.

What it is studied for

Most of the Pinealon literature comes from the Khavinson group and its collaborators. In the founding cell work, Pinealon restricted the build-up of reactive oxygen species in a dose-dependent way in rat cerebellar granule cells, neutrophils and PC12 cells under oxidative stress, reduced necrotic cell death and delayed activation of the ERK 1/2 signalling pathway; because some effects continued at concentrations where the antioxidant effect had levelled off, the authors proposed that it also acts on the cell genome (Khavinson et al., Rejuvenation Research, 2011). In an animal model, pregnant rats given dietary methionine to raise homocysteine had offspring with better spatial learning and cerebellar neurons more resistant to oxidative stress when the dams received Pinealon (Arutjunyan et al., International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, 2012).

A 2020 review sets out the group’s proposed mechanism: the EDR peptide enters cells and binds histone proteins or nucleic acids, shifting the MAPK/ERK pathway and the synthesis of proteins such as the antioxidant enzymes SOD2 and GPX1 (Khavinson et al., Molecules, 2020). In 2024, neurons induced from the skin fibroblasts of elderly donors grew longer, more branched dendrites with EDR, and showed less oxidative DNA damage (Kraskovskaya et al., International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2024). Human data are limited to small Russian-language reports; one study of 32 people aged 41 to 83 compared Pinealon with the related tripeptide Vesugen on biological-age indicators and found the larger effect with Vesugen (Meshchaninov et al., Advances in Gerontology, 2015).

Our summaries are in what is Pinealon and Pinealon research: what the human and lab studies show.

Stability

With three residues and none of the oxidation-prone ones, Pinealon is chemically simple. Its slow routes in solution are cyclisation of the N-terminal glutamic acid and isomerisation at the aspartic acid, with acid-driven cleavage beside the aspartate as a third. The Pinealon stability page covers those routes, freeze-thaw, light and what visible changes mean.

Solubility

Pinealon is tiny and highly charged, and a supplier rates its water solubility at 100 mg/mL or more, so it dissolves in bacteriostatic water at once and needs no acid. The Pinealon solubility guide explains why, which concentrations dissolve cleanly and what causes haze.

Handling

Bench practice for Pinealon is mostly about keeping the solution cold, clean and labelled. The Pinealon handling page lists the steps and the common mistakes.

On arrival

What a sealed vial should look like, why it travels without an ice pack and where it goes first are on the Pinealon on-arrival page.

Storage and reconstitution

Fridge and freezer windows, before and after mixing, are on how long Pinealon lasts. Water volumes and the concentration table for a 10 mg vial are on how much bacteriostatic water for a Pinealon 10 mg vial.

FAQ

Short answers to the questions researchers ask most about storing, mixing and handling Pinealon are on the Pinealon FAQ.

Where to get it

Vistara Labs supplies Pinealon 10 mg as a lyophilised vial for laboratory research, shipped within Canada by Canada Post Xpresspost. More detail on sourcing is in Buy Pinealon in Canada, and certificates are on our lab reports page. For the better-known Khavinson tetrapeptide, see Epitalon research.