Cardiogen

What it is

Cardiogen is built from four amino acids, alanine, glutamate, aspartate, and arginine, often written by its short code AEDR. It belongs to a family of short peptides that a Russian research group has studied for decades under the label bioregulators, each named for a different tissue of interest, with Cardiogen's focus being heart-related cell types.

The laboratory studies behind Cardiogen use cultured cells rather than whole animals or people. Researchers have looked at connective-tissue cells called fibroblasts and at myocardial tissue, the working muscle of the heart, from both young and older laboratory rats, comparing how these cells respond to the peptide across ages [1].

How it is studied

The published research uses cultured mouse fibroblast cells and samples of rat heart tissue exposed to the peptide for short periods, from about thirty minutes up to several days, measuring levels of structural proteins inside the cells afterward using laboratory protein-detection techniques [1]. No study has tested Cardiogen in a living, intact animal cardiovascular system, and no human study of any kind has been published.

What studies report

• In cultured mouse fibroblast cells, the AEDR peptide increased the levels of several structural proteins that make up a cell's internal skeleton and its nuclear scaffolding, by two to five times compared with untreated cells. [1]
• The same laboratory work links these structural-protein changes to the peptide's proposed effect on heart-tissue cells, though this connection has been drawn mainly from cell-culture experiments rather than from a living heart. [1]

What is not known

No study has tested Cardiogen in a whole living animal's cardiovascular system, let alone in a person, so it is not known whether the cell-level changes reported in culture translate into any measurable effect on how a heart works. The Cardiogen-specific literature is limited in volume and comes almost entirely from the single research group that developed the bioregulator peptide family, and independent replication by other laboratories has been very limited.

Reported adverse findings

• The published cell-culture studies did not report toxicity to the cells at the concentrations tested, but this is not equivalent to a safety study in a living animal or person. [1]

Regulatory status

No national medicines regulator, including the FDA and Health Canada, has approved Cardiogen for use in people. It exists only as a research compound studied in cell cultures and isolated tissue.