Pinealon Research Peptide

Pinealon is a synthetic tripeptide with the sequence Glu-Asp-Arg, a molecular weight of about 418 and the CAS number 175175-23-2. It comes from Vladimir Khavinson's short-peptide research programme and has been studied mainly in neuronal cell cultures and in rat models of oxidative stress, hypoxia and amyloid damage. Crown Peptides supplies it at 10mg per vial; it is also listed as EDR peptide or Pinealon peptide.

It is simply the sequence spelled in single-letter amino acid code: E for glutamic acid, D for aspartic acid and R for arginine. Many journal titles use the short form rather than the trade-style name, so searching for both "Pinealon" and "EDR peptide" gives a much fuller view of the literature. The same shorthand explains KED, the Lys-Glu-Asp tripeptide that often appears as a comparison in the same studies.

Cerebellar granule cells are a long-established preparation for studying oxidative injury in neurons. They can be grown in large, fairly uniform populations and respond in a measurable way when stressed. Several of the same authors used them in the original Pinealon cell paper and again in the rat offspring study, where neurons were isolated from young animals' cerebellum and challenged in culture, so the two sets of results can be read side by side.

Cortexin is not one molecule but a mixture of polypeptides extracted from animal brain cortex, whereas Pinealon is a single defined tripeptide. When the two were compared in aged rats under hypoxia and mild cooling, Cortexin had the more pronounced effect on free-radical processes and caspase-3 activity in the brain. Both raised adrenergic transmitter levels in the hypoxia model and cortical serotonin in the cooling model. For a research team, a known three-residue sequence is far easier to characterise and reproduce than an extract.

A Russian review of neuroprotective peptides placed them in the same group of short peptides, but structurally they have little in common. Semax is seven residues long, built from a fragment of the pituitary hormone ACTH plus a Pro-Gly-Pro tail, and its research centres on BDNF signalling and stroke models. Pinealon has no hormone parent at all and is studied for oxidative stress, synapse density and possible interactions with gene promoters.

Dendritic spines are tiny protrusions on a neuron where most excitatory synapses form. The mushroom type, with a broad head on a thin neck, is regarded as the stable, mature form associated with lasting connections. Amyloid-beta strips these spines from cultured hippocampal neurons, so counting them has become a standard readout in Alzheimer's models, and it is the measure on which EDR produced its clearest result.

The evidence says it can. When Pinealon was tagged with a fluorescent label and added to HeLa cells, signal appeared in the cytoplasm, the nucleus and the nucleolus. The same paper reported that unlabelled Pinealon changed the fluorescence of labelled DNA fragments in a sequence-dependent way, even distinguishing methylated from unmethylated cytosine. Later computer modelling placed EDR among short peptides predicted to fit the binding sites of membrane carriers such as LAT1, LAT2 and PEPT1.

Homocysteine is formed when the body processes the amino acid methionine, and raised levels are linked with oxidative stress and with harm to developing nervous tissue. Feeding pregnant rats extra methionine is a practical way to raise it in a controlled fashion, so researchers can then ask whether a compound given to the mother changes how the offspring's brain cells cope. Pinealon was tested in exactly that design.

In hippocampal neurons exposed to amyloid, the gap was wide: EDR lifted mushroom-spine numbers by 71%, KED by 20%. In the later 5xFAD mouse work both tripeptides were reported to protect spines, and docking suggested each recognises similar DNA sequences. KED is not part of the Crown Peptides range, but its results make a helpful benchmark when reading EDR papers.

There is. In ageing cultures of brain cortex cells, both Glu-Asp-Arg and Lys-Glu-Asp were reported to stimulate serotonin expression. Docking pointed to a CCTGCC nucleotide stretch in the gene for tryptophan hydroxylase, the enzyme that makes serotonin, as a sequence complementary to these peptides. The aged-rat cooling study, which recorded higher cortical serotonin, adds an animal data point to the same theme.

Not quite, and that is what caught researchers' attention. Its protective effect on radical levels and cell survival reached a ceiling at low concentrations, yet changes in the cell cycle carried on as concentrations increased. A pure radical scavenger would not be expected to show that split, which is why the authors proposed an additional route of action involving the genome.

Pinealon begins with glutamic acid, and a glutamic acid at the start of a peptide chain can slowly close into a five-membered ring called pyroglutamate, losing one molecule of water, about 18 mass units. The reaction is favoured by warmth and by mildly acidic or alkaline solutions, and it can even happen inside a mass spectrometer's ion source. A small companion peak just below the main protonated ion near 419 is therefore worth recognising when reviewing data on stored solutions; each batch’s Certificate of Analysis documents the powder as dispatched.

Every vial contains 10mg. Order it singly, or in five- and ten-vial packs that cost less per vial. Ten milligrams of a 418-dalton peptide is close to 24 micromoles, a generous quantity for cell-culture work, so one vial often covers a pilot series, while the larger packs suit animal studies or longer projects where you want plenty of material on hand from the outset.