An independent peptide reference — no sellers, every claim sourced

Livagen

Also known as KEDA peptide, Lys-Glu-Asp-Ala, lysyl-glutamyl-aspartyl-alanine

Khavinson tetrapeptide presented as a liver bioregulator, with chromatin claims from a single group.

preclinical Neuro & cognition research chemical

At a glance

Category
Neuro & cognition
Status
research chemical
Route
intraperitoneal and intramuscular in the animal work; in vitro in most of the cell studies; oral or sublingual in the capsule form of the bioregulator line
Half-life
No published pharmacokinetics in any species. An unmodified tetrapeptide with free termini; survival in plasma is presumably a matter of minutes. All circulating half-life figures are unsourced.
Onset
No validated onset time; there are no controlled human data on the time course of any effect
Molecular weight
Approximately 461 g/mol for the free tetrapeptide (Lys-Glu-Asp-Ala, calculated). No independently determined value from a published characterisation was found.
Sequence
Lys-Glu-Asp-Ala

As far as can be established, synthetic Livagen is not a registered medicine anywhere. The corresponding capsule products in the Russian Cytomax and Cytogen bioregulator lines are registered as food supplements (BAD), a notification regime without any efficacy assessment - which is not approval as a medicine. PeptideX has not been able to open the Russian register from outside Russia to confirm this, so the registration should be read as an unverified claim rather than an established fact. No EMA or FDA approval; outside Russia traded exclusively as a research chemical. The entire indexed literature is 19 PubMed records 8, none of them a clinical trial.

Doping status: Not listed by name; as a non-approved substance it falls under the S0 residual category and is prohibited at all times

Checked against the WADA 2026 Prohibited List. For a specific product and country, Global DRO is the lookup athletes are expected to use — the List names substances, not brand names.

This is a short entry. There is little or no published research on this compound, so there is correspondingly little to report. Empty dosing or reconstitution sections mean no credible figures exist — not that they were left out.

Mechanism of action

Livagen is the liver member of the Khavinson short-peptide series, derived from bovine liver extract (Livagen relates to the extract product Svetinorm/liver Cytamin in the same way Epitalon relates to Epithalamine). It is included in a neuro reference because it is sold alongside the cognitive bioregulators and shares their mechanistic claim, not because it has any established action on the brain.

The signature finding is chromatin decondensation. In 2002 Khavinson, Lezhava and colleagues reported that KEDA applied to lymphocytes from donors aged 75-88 produced de-heterochromatinisation, activation of ribosomal genes and release of pericentromeric heterochromatin - in effect, reversing an age-associated chromatin change in a dish. Related papers extend the claim to enkephalin-degrading enzymes in serum 4, digestive enzyme activity in rats of different ages 6, and protein synthesis rhythms in hepatocyte culture 1.

The proposed mechanism is the same bioregulator doctrine as for Epitalon and Pinealon: nuclear entry and sequence-complementary binding to promoter DNA. The same objections apply. A four-residue peptide has no folded structure with which to make the multiple simultaneous contacts that sequence-specific DNA recognition requires, and no independent structural biology supports a regulatory binding mode. The chromatin observations may be real as observations; the explanation offered for them is a hypothesis.

What the research shows

Around nineteen PubMed-indexed records mention Livagen 8, and essentially all of them come from Khavinson's group or affiliated Russian and Georgian laboratories, concentrated in a small set of journals. There is no independent replication of the chromatin finding in more than twenty years, no controlled clinical trial, and no evidence that Livagen does anything measurable in a living human being.

Research in humans

No controlled clinical trial was found. The human-derived work is ex vivo: peptide applied to lymphocytes taken from elderly donors, with chromatin morphology as the readout. That is a cell-culture experiment using human cells, not a study of an effect in people. There is no human pharmacokinetic, safety or outcome data.

Animal and lab research

Reported effects, all from the originating circle: altered digestive enzyme activity in gastrointestinal tract and other organs in rats of different ages 6; changed protein synthesis rhythm in hepatocyte cultures from rats of different ages 1; effects on organotypic liver culture morphology 3; effects on enkephalin-degrading enzymes in human serum in vitro 4; and appearances in multi-peptide immunology papers alongside other bioregulators.

Caveats. Single research programme with a commercial interest in the products; small n; no blinding described in the morphological scoring, which matters a great deal for a subjective endpoint like chromatin condensation assessed by microscopy; no protocol registration; frequent testing of several peptides together, which prevents attribution to KEDA specifically; publication in journals with limited external scrutiny and much of the primary work in Russian. No toxicology programme.

What it is used for

  • Presented as a liver bioregulator and anti-ageing agent, and marketed alongside the cognitive bioregulators - claims the evidence does not support 8
  • Studied ex vivo for chromatin activation in lymphocytes from elderly donors 25
  • Self-administered in grey-market courses without a validated indication or dose

Dosing

Route
subcutaneous or intramuscular in user protocols; capsules in the Russian supplement line
  • The cell work used nanogram-to-microgram per millilitre concentrations in culture 245; that is not a dose and cannot be converted into one.
  • User protocols proposing a few milligrams per day for 10-20 days are an artefact of the vial size sold, not a research finding.
  • There is no dose-finding study, no maximum tolerated dose, no human pharmacokinetics and no dose-response curve. Left null rather than manufacturing a protocol.

These figures describe what the literature and published protocols report. They are not advice and not a dosing instruction.

Protocols

Bioregulator course (grey market)

user protocol — not validated

Source: user protocols and vendor material

This is not a validated schedule. It is a pattern that circulates among users and sellers, reproduced because it is what people actually follow — not because it has been tested. No trial established these doses, this interval or this duration, and nobody is checking what is in the vial. Treat every number below as an assertion, not a finding.

Days 1-10, some protocols to 20a few milligrams per day by subcutaneous or intramuscular injection
Repeatonce or twice a year

The published Livagen work is nanogram-to-microgram per millilitre concentrations in cell culture, which is not a dose and cannot be converted into one. The milligram figure here follows the vial size. The Russian capsule product in the same line is taken orally and is a different preparation.

Schedules are reproduced as their source states them. Units, IU and milligrams explains why the figures are not interchangeable between products.

Reconstitution

Vial sizes
10 mg, 20 mg (lyophilised powder, research chemical); also capsules in the Russian bioregulator line, a different product
Solvent
bacteriostatic water (0.9% benzyl alcohol); sterile water only if used within the same session
Storage
Supplier guidance: powder at 2-8 °C short term or -20 °C long term, protected from light; reconstituted at 2-8 °C for roughly 2-4 weeks. These are handling conventions, not pharmacopoeia specifications.

Let the diluent run down the vial wall, swirl and do not shake; discard if cloudy. Grey-market short peptides are regularly mislabelled or underdosed, and self-issued certificates of analysis cannot be independently verified.

Work it out for Livagen

Safety

Side effects

  • Not systematically documented, because no systematic safety research exists - none of the 19 indexed records is a safety or tolerability study 8. An empty side effect profile reflects absence of investigation, not demonstrated safety
  • Reported at user level only, uncontrolled and unverifiable: injection site reactions

Do not use if

  • Pregnancy and breastfeeding - no data
  • Children and adolescents - no data
  • Hypersensitivity to the peptide or to benzyl alcohol in the diluent
  • Caution is warranted on principle in anyone with active or past malignancy: the central claim made for this peptide is that it derepresses condensed chromatin and reactivates silenced genes 25, which is not a process anyone has characterised for safety in a living organism
  • No toxicology, carcinogenicity or reproductive toxicity study appears in the indexed literature 8

Interactions

Not studied. No interaction data of any kind exist.

Sources