Prostamax Research, Specifications & Scientific Information

Introduction

Prostamax is a four-residue peptide — Lys-Glu-Asp-Pro — with a small and unusually uniform literature: almost all of it is cytogenetics and calorimetry performed on lymphocytes cultured from very old donors, by one group in Tbilisi working with the originating institute in St Petersburg.

That uniformity makes the page short, and it also makes one number stand out. In donors aged 75 to 86, exposure to the tetrapeptide roughly doubled the frequency of sister chromatid exchange, from 5.9 ± 0.2 to 12.0 ± 0.28 per cell ^[1]. Sister chromatid exchange is a standard genotoxicity endpoint. The paper reads the rise as evidence of chromatin decondensation; read by its conventional meaning it would indicate increased DNA damage and recombinational repair. Both readings fit the measurement. Neither has been tested against the other.

The shared limitations of this literature apply here in a concentrated form and are stated once. A single originating programme; a single collaborating cytogenetics group; several papers in one regional journal; small donor numbers; every result obtained by adding peptide directly to cultured cells or to excised tissue; no whole-animal study located; no clinical study of any design; and no independent replication.

What Is Prostamax?

A synthetic tetrapeptide with free termini, KEDP in single-letter code: L-lysyl-L-alpha-glutamyl-L-alpha-aspartyl-L-proline. The name is spelled Prostamax in the PubChem record and in the cytogenetic papers, and Prostomax in the originating group's 2022 transporter review, where the entry is given as KEDP ^[6]. The two spellings are the same compound, and a search for only one returns part of an already small record.

Within the bioregulator series it occupies the prostatic position, designed from the amino acid composition of a prostate polypeptide complex. Its one appearance in a cross-tissue experiment fits that assignment: explants of heart, lung, prostate and pancreas from 3-week-old and 18-month-old rats were exposed at 0.05 ng/ml to four matched peptides, and each was reported to stimulate growth in its own tissue ^[5].

Prostamax has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for any indication. No marketing application is on record in the United States, and no study of it appears on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Prostamax Specifications

PubChem carries the free tetrapeptide as compound identifier 9848296 with CAS registry number 473578-47-1, formula C20H33N5O9 and an average mass of 487.51 g/mol. No unique ingredient identifier resolves in the FDA/NCATS Global Substance Registration System. The name is spelled Prostamax in the PubChem record and in the cytogenetic literature, and Prostomax in the originating group's 2022 transporter review; both refer to the KEDP sequence. The C-terminal proline is structurally consequential: proline is the only standard residue whose side chain closes back onto the backbone nitrogen, which removes an amide hydrogen, restricts backbone rotation and gives this tetrapeptide a more defined conformation than its freely rotating siblings. Reagent material supplied as a salt will not match the free-peptide mass above.

Values that a public register does not carry are shown as not publicly characterised rather than estimated. Identifiers are reference values; the certificate of analysis supplied with a laboratory order is the record for a given lot.

How Does Prostamax Work?

Not established, and the proposed account for this compound is physical rather than pharmacological — which is both its most interesting feature and the reason it explains less than it appears to.

No receptor is proposed and none has been sought successfully. The specification table shows primary target, receptor family and agonist status as not publicly characterised.

The physical account. Chromatin in intact human lymphocytes was studied by differential scanning microcalorimetry. Two denaturation stages were resolved, at 94.4 °C and 105.1 °C with associated heats of 50.8 and 44.9 J/g DNA. Adding the tetrapeptide redistributed heat between two earlier endotherms and shifted both to lower temperatures, by 2.9 °C and 1.0 °C. The authors propose that the redistribution reflects partial relaxation of the 30-nanometre chromatin fibre into the 10-nanometre filament, and that the small decrease in the two high-temperature transitions reflects minor structural change in nucleosomal organisation ^[2].

What that does and does not establish. A shift in a denaturation temperature is a real physical measurement on a real sample, and it is more than most compounds in this family have. What it does not do is identify what the peptide bound to produce the shift — chromatin is DNA, histones, non-histone proteins and water, and a calorimeter reports the aggregate. The attribution to a specific fibre order is an interpretation laid over the thermogram.

No transport or pharmacokinetic data exist. In every experiment described below the peptide was added to the medium of cultured cells or to an explant. Nothing is published about whether it enters a cell, let alone a nucleus, in an intact organism.

Prostamax Mechanism of Action

In vitro research

Cytogenetics in lymphocytes from old donors. Cells from individuals aged 75 to 86 were exposed and three parameters were measured ^[1]:

• Sister chromatid exchange rose from 5.9 ± 0.2 to 12.0 ± 0.28 per cell.
• Silver-positive nucleolus organiser regions rose from 0.95 to 2.5 per cell.
• Large pericentromeric C-heterochromatin segments on chromosomes 1 and 9 fell in frequency.

The authors conclude that the tetrapeptide decondenses and deheterochromatinises chromatin during ageing, releasing genes that heterochromatinisation had repressed, and propose that this modifying effect on chromatin is the basis of a protective action.

The sister chromatid exchange figure is the one that will not sit quietly. In toxicology a doubling of sister chromatid exchange frequency is a positive genotoxicity signal — the assay exists to detect agents that increase DNA damage and recombinational repair. Chromatin that is more open is also more accessible to damage and to repair machinery, so the two readings are not mutually exclusive; but a paper reporting a two-fold rise in a damage marker as a favourable finding has made an interpretive move that the data do not force. The distinction matters more here than in most places, because the same number is the strongest evidence the compound has.

The five-peptide chromatin comparison. In leukocytes from subjects aged 75 to 88, this tetrapeptide was one of five tested. All five activated ribosomal genes, decondensed densely packed chromatin fibrils and released genes repressed by age-related condensation of euchromatic regions. This one, with Epitalon and Livagen, also decondensed pericentromeric structural chromatin of chromosome 1; only Epitalon and Livagen did so on chromosome 9 ^[4]. That is a graded pattern across sequences, which is what a series ought to show.

Chromatin with metal ions. A microcalorimetric study examined the tetrapeptide together with copper(II) and cadmium(II) ions in lymphocyte cultures from ageing people. At the microgram quantities used, neither ion altered the thermal stability of membrane, nuclear or cytoplasmic proteins; copper caused additional heterochromatin condensation and cadmium caused decondensation with partial denaturation ^[3]. The peptide's own contribution in that design is harder to isolate than in the single-agent work.

Organotypic prostate explants. Growth of prostate explants from young and old rats was stimulated at 0.05 ng/ml relative to controls, alongside three sibling peptides each matched to its own tissue ^[5].

Everything in this section was observed in cultured cells or excised tissue. None of it establishes anything about an intact animal, and none of it about a person.

What Is Prostamax Being Researched For?

• Chromatin condensation state in cells from elderly donors — the cytogenetic and calorimetric work that makes up most of the record ^{[1, 2, 4]}.
• Interaction of chromatin effects with metal ions — copper and cadmium in the same calorimetric system ^[3].
• Tissue-matched explant growth — prostate explants alongside heart, lung and pancreas ^[5].
• Peptide transport modelling — docked at amino acid and peptide transporters as one of twenty-six ultrashort peptides ^[6].

None of that is research into, or evidence about, research-grade material supplied for laboratory use.

Current Research Status

Status as of September 22, 2026. This block is rendered from maintained fields, not from prose, so it cannot go stale in one place and stay current in another.

Prostamax vs Related Compounds

Livagen, Vesugen, Pancragen and Testagen :: The four other members of the Lys-Glu-Asp family, differing from this one only in the fourth residue — alanine, nothing, tryptophan and glycine respectively. That a single terminal residue is held to assign each of them to a different organ is the series' central premise, and no scrambled-sequence or single-substitution control testing it has been located in the published work. Epitalon :: Tested beside this one in the five-peptide chromatin comparison, where the two behaved similarly on chromosome 1 and differently on chromosome 9 ^[4]. Cortagen :: Ala-Glu-Asp-Pro — the same C-terminal proline, a different N-terminal residue, and a neural rather than prostatic assignment. The pair is the closest thing in this batch to a single-substitution comparison, and no experiment has tested them against each other directly.

Evidentiary weight

Lower than most of its siblings. No whole-animal study of this tetrapeptide has been located, no clinical study of any design exists, and the cytogenetic record rests on one collaboration.

No comparison of effect between these compounds is made on this page.

Chemical & Molecular Characteristics

Proline is what distinguishes this molecule, and it is not a cosmetic difference. Proline is the only standard amino acid whose side chain closes back onto its own backbone nitrogen. Three consequences follow directly. The residue has no amide hydrogen, so it cannot donate a backbone hydrogen bond. Rotation about the preceding bond is restricted, so the peptide samples a much narrower set of conformations than its freely rotating siblings. And the bond preceding a proline can adopt a cis as well as the usual trans configuration, so material of a single sequence can exist as a slowly interconverting mixture of two conformers — which in practice can show as peak broadening or as two peaks in a chromatogram for what is genuinely one compound.

Charge is strongly acidic. The lysine amine is the only basic group against the glutamate side chain, the aspartate side chain and the C-terminal carboxyl. The molecule is net negative at physiological pH and very water-soluble, with almost no hydrophobic surface. Reversed-phase retention on C18 is correspondingly poor, and a peptide that elutes near the void volume is hard to resolve from salts and from synthesis-related impurities.

No aromatic residue, so no absorbance at 280 nm. Quantification has to rely on peptide-bond absorbance near 214 nm, where buffers and solvents also absorb. This applies to every lot of this material.

Aspartate and glutamate give isomers of identical mass. Both residues undergo alpha/beta and alpha/gamma rearrangement under thermal and acidic stress, producing species with the same molecular formula and the same mass. Mass spectrometry confirms composition, not connectivity — and for this compound the cis/trans proline question adds a second kind of heterogeneity that mass cannot see either.

One register field is empty. CAS registry number 473578-47-1 and PubChem compound identifier 9848296 both resolve; no FDA/NCATS unique ingredient identifier does. That field is shown as unknown above rather than filled from a neighbouring substance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Scientific References

1. Dzhokhadze TA, Buadze TZh, Gaĭozishvili MN, et al.. [Deheterochromatinization of the chromatin in old age induced by oligopeptide bioregulator (Lys-Glu-Asp-Pro)] Georgian medical news; 2012. PMID 23221144
2. Meskhi T, Khachidze D, Barbakadze Sh, et al.. [The influence of the peptide bioregulator prostamax on heterochromatin of human lymphocytes in situ] Biofizika; 2004. PMID 15612551
3. Kiladze M, Gorgoshidze M, Monaselidze J, et al.. Microcalorimetric study of human blood lymphocytes culture at presence of copper, cadmium and prostamax Georgian medical news; 2009. PMID 19359734
4. Khavinson VKh, Lezhava TA, Malinin VV. Effects of short peptides on lymphocyte chromatin in senile subjects Bulletin of experimental biology and medicine; 2004. PMID 15085253 doi:10.1023/b:bebm.0000024393.40560.05
5. Zakutskiĭ AN, Chalisova NI, Ryzhak GA, et al.. [The tissue-specific effect of synthetic peptides-biologic regulators in organotypic tissues culture in young and old rats] Advances in gerontology = Uspekhi gerontologii; 2006. PMID 17152728
6. Khavinson V, Linkova N, Kozhevnikova E, et al.. Transport of Biologically Active Ultrashort Peptides Using POT and LAT Carriers International journal of molecular sciences; 2022. PMID 35887081 doi:10.3390/ijms23147733

Every identifier above is resolved against PubMed, Crossref or ClinicalTrials.gov at build time, and the title returned by the register is compared with the title stored here. A page does not publish if a reference fails to resolve.

Research-Use Information

For in vitro research use only. This material is a laboratory reagent. It is not a drug, food, dietary supplement, or cosmetic and is not for human or veterinary use, including ingestion, injection, or any other administration. No information on this page describes or implies any effect in humans or animals. Sold only to researchers under our Terms of Sale.