Where to buy AOD-9604.

AOD-9604 is the rare research peptide whose own pivotal trial argues against the marketing. A 24-week Phase IIb study in more than 500 obese participants missed its weight-loss endpoint, and the clinical program stopped there. Where to buy AOD-9604 in 2026 is therefore a narrower question than it looks: not which vendor promises the most, but which one can prove the vial holds a correctly folded 16-residue fragment and which one is honest about what that fragment did in humans.

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• CoA. Certificate of Analysis. A one-page lab report showing the specific lot’s identity, purity, and contamination testing.
• ISO/IEC 17025. The international quality standard for testing labs. A 17025-accredited lab has been audited by a third party for technical competence.
• GRAS. Generally Recognized as Safe. An FDA framework for food ingredients. Not a drug approval, and not a statement about efficacy.
• Disulfide bridge. A covalent bond between two cysteine sulfurs that locks a peptide into a specific fold. AOD-9604 has one, between residues 7 and 14.
• Ellman’s reagent. A colorimetric assay that quantifies free (unbonded) thiol groups. It is how a lab proves a disulfide actually formed.
• Lyophilized. Freeze-dried into a stable powder. Lyophilized peptides survive short room-temperature transit and store for years frozen.

What you’re actually buying

AOD-9604 — the name is literally “Anti-Obesity Drug 9604” — was developed at Monash University in the 1990s and licensed to Metabolic Pharmaceuticals in Australia. It is the C-terminal fragment of human growth hormone, residues 176–191, with an N-terminal tyrosine added for stability. Full-length hGH is a 191-residue protein; this is the last sixteen residues of it, and nothing else.

The design logic was genuinely elegant. Growth hormone drives lipolysis, but it also raises IGF-1, promotes growth, and degrades insulin sensitivity — the GH-receptor-mediated effects that limit clinical hGH use. Isolate the lipolytic domain, the reasoning went, and you keep the fat-cell signal while leaving the receptor untouched. The molecule does appear to have achieved the selectivity half of that goal: it has little measurable affinity for the canonical growth hormone receptor. What it never achieved was the translation. The proposed mechanism — direct lipolytic action on adipocytes through a putative “hGH 176-191 receptor” or a β3-adrenergic-like adipose pathway — rests on rodent work, and the receptor in question has never been definitively identified in the twenty-five years since.

So the sequence on the vial matters more than usual. Written out, it is Tyr-Leu-Arg-Ile-Val-Gln-Cys-Arg-Ser-Val-Glu-Gly-Ser-Cys-Gly-Phe: sixteen residues, two cysteines, one intramolecular disulfide bridge between them. Legitimate material is a white lyophilized cake in a sealed glass vial, stable at −20 °C for up to 36 months and at 2–8 °C for around 12, with a reconstituted in-use window near 28 days refrigerated. Reducing agents (DTT, BME, TCEP) will cleave the bridge and abolish the fold, which is one reason the disulfide line on a CoA is not a formality.

The three places people buy AOD-9604

The channels for AOD-9604 look superficially like the channels for any research peptide, but the middle one behaves differently here because of the GRAS filing.

1. Research-supply vendors (the dominant channel)

Nearly all AOD-9604 in circulation moves through research-supply vendors selling lyophilized powder labeled “for laboratory research use only.” That labeling is what makes the sale lawful in the United States. The vendor is not a pharmacy, the material is not for human use, and the documentation burden falls entirely on the buyer. What you should require: a third-party CoA from a named ISO 17025-accredited lab, HPLC purity ≥99% with the chromatogram, mass-spec identity, disulfide-integrity data, and endotoxin testing by LAL.

2. The “GRAS ingredient” wellness channel (the oddity)

This is the channel that exists for AOD-9604 and almost no other research peptide. Because a GRAS self-determination dossier was submitted in 2014 for AOD-9604 as a food/dietary ingredient, a class of supplement-adjacent sellers presents the compound as a legitimized ingredient rather than an unapproved drug. The dossier is real. What it means is narrow: a sponsor concluded the substance is safe for use in food, under a framework that evaluates food safety and never evaluates therapeutic efficacy. It is not an FDA drug approval, it does not license weight-loss claims, and it does not upgrade the clinical evidence by one paper. Any vendor whose regulatory section leans on GRAS to imply approval is worth reading skeptically everywhere else on the page too.

3. Compounding and clinic channels (largely closed here)

A 503A compounding pharmacy can in principle compound a peptide against an individual prescription, but AOD-9604 has no approved-drug basis anywhere in the world — not FDA, not EMA, not the Australian TGA despite the compound’s Australian origin. In practice, U.S. compounders will not touch it, and clinic-channel offers of “pharmaceutical-grade” AOD-9604 are worth treating as a claim about marketing rather than about manufacturing.

The AOD-9604-specific checks

The standard eight criteria for any peptide vendor apply. Five sharpen considerably for a short growth-hormone fragment.

1. CAS number, formula, and intact mass

The CAS Registry Number for AOD-9604 is 221231-10-3; the molecular formula is C₇₈H₁₂₃N₂₃O₂₃S₂. Mass spectrometry on the CoA should report identity against a specification of m/z 1815.08 ± 0.5. A CoA that omits the CAS number, or that reports a mass without stating the acceptance window, is giving you a number rather than a check. If the observed mass sits outside that window, the vial does not contain AOD-9604 — there is no interpretation that rescues it.

2. Disulfide-bridge integrity — the check almost nobody publishes

This is the single most AOD-specific line item on a CoA, and most vendor certificates do not have it. AOD-9604’s Cys7–Cys14 bridge defines the folded conformation the entire lipolytic hypothesis was built around. A reduced, linear chain has the same amino acids in the same order and will satisfy a sequence-identity check. Because forming a disulfide removes two hydrogens, the linear chain reads only about 2 Da heavier — a gap narrow enough to disappear inside a sloppy mass window. Ellman’s reagent measures free thiol directly, and a credible specification is ≥95% oxidized. Material tested at 97.2% oxidized is telling you something a purity percentage never can.

3. The fragment-counterfeit problem

A 16-residue peptide with no acylation, no non-natural residues, and no cyclization is cheap and fast to synthesize almost anywhere. That cuts both ways. It keeps legitimate AOD-9604 inexpensive, and it makes substitution economically attractive: shorter truncations, the fragment without the stabilizing N-terminal tyrosine, scrambled sequences, or bulk-filler blends are all cheaper than the real thing and all pass a visual inspection of a white lyophilized cake.

The important consequence is that HPLC purity is not an identity test. A vial can be 99% pure and 100% the wrong molecule; the chromatogram only says the material is homogeneous, not that it is what the label claims. For fragment peptides, identity data (mass spec plus the disulfide assay) is the load-bearing part of the certificate and purity is secondary. Vendors who publish only a purity percentage for AOD-9604 have published the less informative half.

4. Counter-ion and endotoxin accounting

Peptides ship as salts, and the counter-ion is real mass in the vial that is not peptide. A CoA should state the counter-ion and its content — for AOD-9604, acetate below roughly 12% w/w is a reasonable specification, with well-controlled material landing nearer 6%. Endotoxin by LAL below 1.0 EU/mg and a bioburden line round out the safety-adjacent section. Absent these, the stated milligram figure on the label is a nominal number rather than a measured one.

5. The GRAS-versus-approval check

Read the vendor’s regulatory language literally. “GRAS” and “FDA-approved” are different frameworks with different evidentiary bars, and only one of them evaluates whether a substance does anything. AOD-9604 has the first and has never had the second. Marketing that slides between them is the clearest single signal that a supplier is willing to misrepresent the record.

AOD-9604

hGH fragment 16 aa Cys7–Cys14 disulfide

The same 16-residue hGH 176-191 fragment used as the reference material in the published record — including the 2022 Drug Design, Development and Therapy work that employed the peptide as a targeting moiety on doxorubicin-loaded chitosan nanoparticles. CAS 221231-10-3, MS identity 1815.08 ± 0.5, ≥99% HPLC purity, disulfide integrity by Ellman’s, ISO 17025 third-party CoA on every lot.

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2026 pricing benchmarks

AOD-9604 is inexpensive to make. Sixteen residues, standard amino acids, one oxidation step to close the disulfide, then repurification. Here is what ISO 17025-verified retail looks like in 2026:

• 2 mg vial: $18-$35 ($9-$18/mg). An uncommon entry size; the per-mg penalty is steep.
• 5 mg vial: $30-$60 ($6-$12/mg). The standard retail presentation and the best per-mg value at most vendors.
• 10 mg vial: $55-$100 ($6-$10/mg). The per-mg curve flattens here rather than dropping further.
• Multi-vial discounts: 10-25% off on 3-packs and 6-packs is typical across the market.

Pricing meaningfully below $20 per 5 mg vial deserves a direct question about the oxidation and repurification steps. Closing the Cys7–Cys14 bridge under controlled conditions and then re-running HPLC on the folded product is where the cost sits in this molecule — and it is exactly the step a producer skips when competing on price, because the crude linear chain looks identical on a label.

The other pricing trap runs the opposite direction. AOD-9604 is often marketed as the affordable alternative to GLP-1-class research compounds, which run an order of magnitude higher per vial. That price gap is a synthesis fact: incretin analogs are 31-39 residues with lipidation and specialized coupling chemistry. It is not a value judgment, and it is not evidence about either compound. Reading cheapness as efficiency here inverts the actual comparison, which is that one class has a decisive human trial record and the other has a negative pivotal readout.

Legal and regulatory status

AOD-9604’s regulatory position is unusual mainly because there is a real filing to point at — just not the one vendors imply:

• United States (FDA): Not approved as a drug for any indication. Not a controlled substance. A GRAS self-determination dossier was submitted by the sponsor in 2014 for use as a food/dietary ingredient — a food-safety category, not drug approval. Legal to buy and sell as a research reference compound labeled for laboratory use only; selling for human consumption with weight-loss claims is not.
• European Union (EMA): Not approved.
• Australia (TGA): Not approved as a drug, despite the compound’s Australian origin and sponsor.
• WADA: Not explicitly listed by name. The S2 class covers growth hormone, its fragments and releasing factors — see the WADA Prohibited List for current categorizations.
• Major sports leagues: Not explicitly prohibited by name.

That WADA line is the trap worth dwelling on for anyone athletic-adjacent. “Not on the list” is doing much less work than it appears to. The S2 category is written to cover growth hormone and its fragments as a class, and AOD-9604 is, by construction and by its own product name, a C-terminal fragment of human growth hormone. Class-based prohibitions do not require a name listing to apply. Vendors who advertise AOD-9604 as “not banned” are quoting the index rather than the category text.

Red flags specific to AOD-9604

• “FDA approved” or “FDA GRAS approved.” The FDA has never approved AOD-9604 as a drug. GRAS self-determination is a sponsor-submitted food-ingredient framework. Any page that merges the two is misrepresenting the regulatory record.
• No disulfide-integrity line on the CoA. For this molecule, a purity number without an oxidation-state measurement leaves the most likely quality failure untested.
• Purity reported without mass-spec identity. A short fragment is the easiest peptide class to counterfeit with cheaper material. Purity describes homogeneity; only identity data tells you what the homogeneous substance is.
• Marketing that skips the Phase IIb result. A 24-week trial in more than 500 obese participants missed its endpoint and ended the obesity program. A vendor page that narrates the rodent lipolysis story and stops there has made an editorial decision.
• “GH benefits without GH side effects.” The compound was specifically designed to avoid GH-receptor signaling. Claims of GH-equivalent effects on body composition, recovery, or IGF-1-mediated outcomes are pharmacologically inconsistent with the molecule’s own design premise.
• “Not banned by WADA” as a selling point. Class coverage of GH fragments under S2 makes the absence of a name listing weak reassurance, and a vendor leading with it is selling to the wrong reading.
• No named accredited lab. Internal QC is not third-party verification. The report should name the ISO/IEC 17025-accredited lab that ran the tests.
• Pre-reconstituted solution without cold chain. The in-use window for reconstituted AOD-9604 is roughly 28 days refrigerated, and the bridge is vulnerable to reducing conditions. Lyophilized powder is the form that survives shipping.

AOD-9604

5 mg ≥99% pure Lyophilized

16-residue hGH 176-191 fragment with the intramolecular Cys7–Cys14 bridge intact, CAS 221231-10-3, formula C₇₈H₁₂₃N₂₃O₂₃S₂. ISO 17025-verified reference compound; COA with HPLC trace, mass-spec identity, Ellman’s disulfide check, and acetate counter-ion content on every lot.

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Frequently asked questions

Is AOD-9604 legal to buy in the USA?

Yes, as a research reference compound labeled for laboratory use only. It is not FDA-approved as a drug and it is not a controlled substance. Selling AOD-9604 for human consumption with weight-loss claims crosses into FDA drug jurisdiction; buying it as research material does not.

What should the CoA show?

Five lines, at minimum: CAS 221231-10-3 on the identity line, mass-spec identity against a stated window of 1815.08 ± 0.5, HPLC purity ≥99% with the chromatogram attached, disulfide-bridge integrity by Ellman’s reagent at ≥95% oxidized, and endotoxin below 1.0 EU/mg by LAL. Acetate counter-ion content and bioburden round it out. The ISO/IEC 17025-accredited lab should be named on the report. Our walkthrough of the document itself is here: how to read a Certificate of Analysis.

Does the GRAS filing mean the FDA approved it?

No. GRAS is a food-ingredient framework, and the 2014 filing was a sponsor self-determination for AOD-9604 as a food/dietary ingredient. It evaluates safety for use in food. It does not evaluate efficacy for any indication, it does not authorize therapeutic claims, and it is not a drug approval. The distinction is the single most exploited gap in AOD-9604 marketing.

Why does a 16-residue fragment need extra identity verification?

Because short fragments are the cheapest peptides to counterfeit. Sixteen standard residues with no acylation and no non-natural chemistry can be made almost anywhere, which means substitutions — truncations, the fragment without the stabilizing N-terminal tyrosine, or a reduced chain that never had its bridge closed — are economically attractive and visually undetectable. A purity number describes homogeneity only. Mass spec plus the disulfide assay is what establishes identity.

Is AOD-9604 prohibited in sport?

It is not named on the WADA Prohibited List. The S2 category covers growth hormone, its fragments and releasing factors as a class, and AOD-9604 is structurally a growth hormone fragment, so class coverage is a live question rather than a settled one. Anyone subject to anti-doping testing should treat non-listing as unresolved and consult their governing body.

Why is it so much cheaper than GLP-1-class research peptides?

Synthesis length and chemistry. AOD-9604 is 16 residues with one disulfide; incretin analogs are 31-39 residues with lipidation and specialized coupling steps. The price difference reflects the manufacturing route and nothing else. The evidence difference runs the other way entirely, which is covered in our GLP-1 class comparison.

How does AOD-9604 compare to tesamorelin as a GH-axis compound?

They are not the same category of evidence. Tesamorelin is a stabilized GHRH analog with FDA approval in a specific indication and a corresponding trial record; AOD-9604 is an unapproved hGH C-terminal fragment whose pivotal obesity trial was negative. Both sit on the growth-hormone axis; only one of them has a regulator’s efficacy finding behind it. Sourcing considerations for the approved analog are covered in where to buy tesamorelin.