Pricing & Sizes
Ships sealed and lyophilized — stable for years at room temperature, supplied as lyophilised powder. Free shipping on every order, no minimum. Every batch ships with its lab report. Reports come from third-party labs including Janoshik, Freedom Diagnostics and Chromate, most verifiable through the lab's own public portal. Ask and we will send the report for your batch.
Lab report on file. Current batch tested by Chromate — RP-HPLC-UV, 40mg fill. Verifiable through the lab's public portal; ask and we will send it.
Reconstitution — bacteriostatic water: 40mg vial reconstituted at 3mL gives 13.3mg/mL. These are concentrations, calculated from vial content and diluent volume. They describe the solution, not a dose.
Email To OrderIn Plain English
Mitochondria are the parts of your cells that turn food into usable energy, and they carry a small amount of their own DNA. MOTS-c is a short peptide written into that mitochondrial DNA. It appears to act as a signal that tells cells to switch into an energy-conserving, fat-burning mode — broadly the same switch exercise flips, which is why it is sometimes described as an exercise mimetic.
What people use it for. Metabolic support — body composition, insulin sensitivity, energy, and endurance. It appeals particularly to people who train, because it appears to work on the same cellular switch that exercise does.
What to know before you buy. Dosing frequency is the thing most people get wrong. MOTS-c clears from the blood quickly, which tempts people into daily dosing, but it works as a trigger rather than a fuel — the downstream effects run for a couple of days after the peptide itself is gone. Intermittent dosing a few times a week is the pattern the research actually used, and daily flat dosing risks blunting the response. Human evidence so far is associative rather than interventional.
What It's Studied For
| Research area | What that rests on |
|---|---|
| Metabolic markers | Activates AMPK, the master energy sensor — the same switch exercise flips |
| Insulin sensitivity research | Improved glucose handling reported in rodent models |
| Endurance and training capacity | Described in the literature as an exercise mimetic; associations reported between natural levels and fitness |
| Body composition | Protection against diet-induced obesity in animal models |
The left column lists the research areas this compound is investigated in; the right column states what that rests on. These are published research findings, not proven outcomes or treatment claims, and nothing here is a recommendation. Sold for laboratory research use only.
At a Glance
- Class
- 16-amino-acid mitochondrial-derived peptide encoded in the mitochondrial 12S rRNA region
- Mechanism
- Activates AMPK, the cell’s principal energy sensor; described in research as a metabolic regulator and exercise mimetic
- Preclinical
- Insulin sensitivity, exercise capacity and metabolic models, predominantly rodent
- Human data
- Observational associations reported; no completed randomised controlled trial
- Reviewed for
- Obesity and osteoporosis
- Regulatory (US)
- Not FDA-approved. PCAC recommended for 503A listing 23 July 2026; no FDA action taken
- Format
- 40mg vial
Regulatory status
On 23 July 2026 the FDA Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee voted 7-5-2 to recommend MOTS-c (free base and acetate) for the Section 503A bulk drug substances list. That vote is advisory only. As of 17 August 2026 the FDA has taken no action on it, has not opened rulemaking, and has not moved the substance to the interim Category 1 list. FDA’s own scientific reviewers had recommended against all seven peptides; the committee voted against staff on six consecutive votes, so the usual assumption that a PCAC recommendation predicts the agency’s decision is weaker here than normal. Several outlets have reported this as the FDA “clearing”, “approving” or “adding” these peptides to the bulks list. That is inaccurate. Nothing has been added and nothing is legally cleared.
What the Research Shows
The core preclinical finding is AMPK activation, with downstream effects on glucose handling and fat metabolism reported in rodent models. Some studies report improved insulin sensitivity and protection against diet-induced obesity. Human work to date is largely observational — for example, associations between circulating MOTS-c levels and metabolic or fitness measures — which cannot establish that administering it produces a benefit.
Why the research uses pulsed administration
MOTS-c has a short circulating half-life, but that is arguably the wrong variable to optimise around. It functions as a signalling trigger with downstream transcriptional effects that persist well beyond the peptide itself, which is the rationale behind the intermittent pulsed dosing patterns used in the published intermittent-administration models rather than flat daily dosing.
What Was Argued at the Hearing
MOTS-c drew the sharpest opposition of day one. The Partnership for Safe Medicines, Public Citizen and the Collaborative for Evidence-Based Medicine argued the substance is poorly characterised and that listing would amount to a large uncontrolled human experiment without adverse event reporting. Georgetown’s Adrienne Fugh-Berman argued that market interest is a reason to study a substance, not to legalise it.
It passed 7-5 with two abstentions — tied with Epitalon for the narrowest winning margin of the meeting.
The bottom line
The clearest biological rationale of anything on the July docket, and an origin nothing else in this range can match. The human work so far is associative, though the first interventional human trial (NCT07505745, phase 2a in prediabetes) began recruiting in February 2026 — which is where a compound sits when the mechanism is convincing and the trials have not caught up to it yet.
Also in the Range
Compare with 5-Amino-1MQ and NAD+ in the metabolic category. MOTS-c works through AMPK; the other two work through NAD+ availability.