Ovagen

Ovagen appears on peptide retailer catalogues as an organ bioregulator in the Khavinson family, typically listed with the sequence Glu-Asp-Leu. Sellers disagree about which organ it is for - liver and ovary both appear - which is itself informative, since the programme's organ assignments are meant to follow from the extract a peptide was designed from [3].

There is no published research on this peptide. No synthesis or characterisation paper, no DNA-binding study of the kind that exists for Bronchogen and Testagen [4][5], no animal work, no pharmacokinetics, no human data.

The name collision is total. Searching for Ovagen returns a genuine body of veterinary literature, and all of it concerns an entirely different product: a follicle-stimulating hormone preparation used to induce superovulation in goats, sheep and cattle for embryo transfer programmes [1][2][6][7][8]. That Ovagen is a pituitary gonadotrophin extract - a protein hormone preparation for farm animals - with no relationship to a synthetic tripeptide beyond the trade name.

This matters practically. Someone checking whether "Ovagen" has research behind it will find that it does, and will be looking at papers on oocyte production in immature rats and embryo recovery in goats. The same trap applies to Cardiogen, whose name collides with a cardiac PET imaging product.

The general lesson for this family: search the amino acid sequence, not the trade name. The names were chosen to be evocative, and several of them were already taken.

This entry exists to record the absence. If pharmacology for this peptide is ever published, it will be added here.

No mechanism has been published for the peptide sold as Ovagen. It is marketed within the family framework of short peptides entering the nucleus and regulating gene expression [9], but no binding, expression or functional data for it have been reported.

Any mechanistic description found by searching the name will concern follicle-stimulating hormone acting on ovarian follicles in livestock [1], which is a different molecule doing a different thing in a different species.

There is no safety data of any kind for the peptide: no toxicology, no animal study, no human exposure report. Nothing can be said about its safety because nothing has been published.

Safety information found under the name belongs to the veterinary gonadotrophin [1][2] and does not transfer.

For any unregulated peptide product, grey-market analyses have repeatedly found contents that do not match labels [10], and with no published characterisation there is no specification against which a product could be verified.

No interaction data exist, and none can exist for a compound with no published pharmacology.