MOTS-c Dosage Chart.
MOTS-c is a mitochondrial-derived peptide studied in animals for metabolic health, body composition, and exercise performance; it has never been tested in humans. Here are the most commonly used dosing protocols.
5 mg subcutaneously, three times a week on non-consecutive days, for 8 – 12 weeks : 50 units on a U-100 syringe from a 10 mg vial mixed with 1 mL of bacteriostatic water. There is no validated human dose for MOTS-c.
Dosage Protocols
Units assume a 10 mg vial in 1 mL of bacteriostatic water (10 mg/mL), so 10 units on a U-100 syringe = 1 mg. Different setup? Use the calculator. No human trial has tested any of these doses.
A two-week tolerance test: see how the site and your fasting glucose respond before adding volume.
Why this dose+
MOTS-c activates AMPK, so a fortnight at 2.5 mg answers two questions cheaply. Does a 25-unit draw leave the injection site quiet, and does your fasting glucose or sleep shift at all, before you commit to three times the weekly volume?
The default protocol: the 3×/week rhythm comes from the mouse study, the 5 mg from convention.
Why this dose+
Reynolds 2021 gave aged mice MOTS-c 3×/week by intraperitoneal injection, and the human schedule inherited that rhythm but neither the dose nor the route. No trial has ever tested 5 mg in a person, so read it as the figure people settled on.
No human evidence that 10 mg beats 5 mg, and 100 units is a full U-100 syringe.
Why this dose+
A full barrel is why this one gets split between two sites: the one documented dose-related problem with a MOTS-c analog was peptide pooling at the injection site. There is no human dose-response curve to climb, so the extra 5 mg buys nothing documented.
- Every “cleared Phase 1 safety” claim traces to NCT03998514, which tested the analog CB4211.
- Phase 1a: 0.2 – 3.0 mg/kg/day to 65 healthy adults. Phase 1b: 25 mg once daily for 4 weeks.
- That is a different molecule dosed daily, not MOTS-c at 5 mg three times a week.
- Native MOTS-c has no completed published human trial; FDA’s July 2026 review found none.
- Reynolds 2021 compared 5 and 15 mg/kg/day in mice and the higher dose won.
- 100% of high-dose mice reached the final sprint stage, versus 16.6% of controls.
- By body-surface-area conversion (Km 3 mouse, 37 human) that is ~85 mg for a 70 kg adult.
- The usual 5 – 10 mg is a fraction of that, and no human dose-response curve exists to climb.
Weekly Schedule
Three non-consecutive days a week, copied from the aged-mouse lifespan study. Line those days up with your training days.
Missed a dose? Take it the next day or skip it. Nothing here depends on stable blood levels, and the mouse protocol was deliberately intermittent. Do not double up: 10 mg is already a full U-100 syringe.
MOTS-c Reconstitution Calculator
Enter your vial size, how much water you added, and the dose you want. We'll tell you exactly how much to draw. At 10 mg in 1 mL a 10 mg dose fills a whole 100-unit syringe, so add more water if you want a smaller draw.
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Standard insulin syringe
Concentration
5.00 mg/mL
1 unit = 50 mcg
Draw volume
1.000 mL
= 5.00 mg ÷ 5.00 mg/mL
Units to draw (1 mL syringe)
100.0 units
1 mL Syringe
100.0 IUFrom Vial to Injection in 6 Steps
Alcohol swab the MOTS-c vial and the bacteriostatic water vial, and let both air-dry before you pierce them.
Run the bacteriostatic water down the inside wall of the vial rather than squirting it onto the powder cake.
Roll the vial gently and give it a couple of minutes to dissolve fully. Shaking damages peptides.
Use a fresh U-100 insulin syringe. Pull to the unit mark from the calculator and flick out any air bubbles.
Rotate sites every dose. At 10 mg the draw is a full syringe, so split it across two sites, since peptide pooling at one site is the documented failure mode in this family.
Keep the lyophilised vial cold and dark. Once mixed, refrigerate at 2 – 8 °C and use within about 28 days. Needles go in a sharps container.
The ~28 day window after mixing comes from the benzyl alcohol preservative in bacteriostatic water. No MOTS-c stability study exists, and no human pharmacokinetic data either, so any half-life figure quoted for this peptide is unsourced.
What to Expect
Almost everything below comes from mice or from the CB4211 analog. Nothing here has been measured in humans taking MOTS-c itself.
The first thing most people notice is local: a small bump, redness or itch. In the CB4211 Phase 1b study, injection-site reactions were the only treatment-emergent adverse event affecting more than 10% of subjects, and were mild to moderate. No human data establishes systemic effects this early.
The preclinical evidence is strongest here. Two weeks of daily MOTS-c roughly doubled treadmill time in 22-month-old mice and let them run 2.16× farther, and 17% reached the top-speed stage while none of the untreated group did. In the same paper, skeletal muscle from treated mice changed metabolically only if the animals had exercised. Non-exercised mice showed nothing.
The nearest human signal is the analog CB4211: four weeks at 25 mg/day cut ALT 21% and AST 28% from baseline (−25% and −17% placebo-subtracted, since placebo ALT drifted up 4% and placebo AST fell 11%), with fasting glucose down 6%. Different molecule, far higher daily dose. Fasting glucose and ALT/AST are the rational retests; liver fat is not, since CB4211 failed to beat placebo there (−5.03% vs −4.88%).
No compound in this family has published human data beyond four weeks of exposure, so an 8 – 12 week cycle already sits past the edge of the evidence. If nothing measurable has shifted by now (glucose, body composition, work capacity), it is not doing much. Run a washout of at least four weeks either way.
Whatever MOTS-c does looks conditional on training. In the mouse work it produced no significant muscle change unless the animal exercised, and in humans the body's own MOTS-c rises with exertion and settles back within about four hours. Keep sessions and food consistent through the cycle.
Feeling Something? Check Here
- Mild redness, itch or a small soft bump at the site that fades within a day.
- Brief warmth or flushing after dosing.
- Fasting glucose reading a few points lower than usual.
- Ordinary training soreness.
- Injection-site lumps that persist for days between doses: painless bumps from peptide lingering at the site suspended the CB4211 Phase 1a trial in 2018.
- Shaky, sweaty or lightheaded when training fasted, especially alongside metformin or berberine.
- New insomnia, or a resting heart-rate rise: both are on USADA’s list of self-reported effects, without denominators.
- Fasting glucose drifting below your normal range.
- Infection at an injection site: spreading redness, heat, pus or fever.
- Hypoglycaemia you cannot correct with food: confusion, vision changes, near-fainting.
- Chest pain, palpitations that will not settle, or syncope.
- An allergic reaction: hives, swelling of the lips or tongue, difficulty breathing.
- Any athlete in a tested sport: MOTS-c is prohibited at all times under WADA S4.4.1 as an AMPK activator, and USADA grants no therapeutic use exemption.
- Pregnancy or breastfeeding.
- Type 1 diabetes, or type 2 managed with insulin or sulfonylureas, without medical supervision: AMPK activation plus the 6% fasting-glucose drop seen with the analog is additive.
- Any history of unexplained hypoglycaemia.
- Active cancer or a personal history of it: MOTS-c acts on AMPK/mTOR and cell-survival signalling, and has never been studied here.
- Under 18.
- Known hypersensitivity to the peptide, or to benzyl alcohol in bacteriostatic water.
- Concurrent metformin, berberine or AICAR without glucose monitoring.
FAQ
Has MOTS-c itself ever been tested in humans?+
Not the native peptide. FDA’s July 2026 review, prepared for the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee’s consideration of MOTS-c for obesity and osteoporosis, concluded there were no clinical studies of safety or effectiveness in humans and no nonclinical data adequate to inform safety for those uses. The only human trial in this family, NCT03998514, tested the analog CB4211. USADA puts it bluntly: it is unknown under what conditions, if any, MOTS-c is safe to use.
I’ve seen a study cited showing 2 mg/kg IV improved glucose disposal 15% in 12 older adults. Is that real?+
No. That claim circulates on several dosing and telehealth sites and is attributed to Reynolds et al. 2021 in Nature Communications, but that paper contains no human dosing arm whatsoever. Its human component was 10 young male volunteers on a stationary bike, measuring their own endogenous MOTS-c before and after exercise; every administration experiment in it was in mice. There is no such trial in PubMed. If a page cites that study for a human dose, treat the rest of its numbers as unreliable.
Where does the “three times a week” schedule actually come from?+
From mice. Reynolds 2021 gave aged mice intermittent MOTS-c 3×/week at 15 mg/kg/day by intraperitoneal injection, starting at middle age (13.5 months) and old age (23.5 months). In the late-life cohort only (the 23.5-month start), median lifespan trended 6.4% higher and maximum lifespan 7.0% higher, with a hazard ratio of 0.654 (P = 0.05 out to 31.8 months), though the overall survival curve did not reach significance (P = 0.23). The human protocol inherited the 3×/week rhythm but neither the dose nor the route.
How much would the mouse dose be in a human?+
Applying FDA’s body-surface-area conversion (Km 3 for mouse, 37 for human), 15 mg/kg in a mouse scales to roughly 1.2 mg/kg in a human, about 85 mg per dose for a 70 kg adult. Nobody injects that. The usual 5 – 10 mg sits at roughly a tenth of the scaled mouse dose. Whether that represents sensible caution or simply an inactive dose is genuinely unknown, and that uncertainty is the honest headline for this compound.
Do I need to train for it to do anything?+
The evidence suggests yes. In Reynolds 2021, skeletal muscle from MOTS-c-treated mice showed significant metabolic changes only in animals that had exercised; non-exercised mice showed no significant alteration. The authors read this as MOTS-c inducing an adaptive response to exercise rather than acting on its own. Dosing on training days, or in the hours before a session, follows from that logic, though no human study has ever compared timings.
How do I reconstitute and store it?+
Add bacteriostatic water slowly down the inside wall of the vial, swirl gently rather than shaking, and let it dissolve fully over a couple of minutes. A 10 mg vial in 1 mL gives 10 mg/mL, so 10 units on a U-100 syringe equals 1 mg: 25 units is 2.5 mg, 50 units is 5 mg. Keep the lyophilised vial cold and dark. Once reconstituted, refrigerate at 2 – 8 °C and use within about 28 days; that window is set by the benzyl alcohol preservative in bacteriostatic water, not by any published MOTS-c degradation study.
Is it legal, and can a compounding pharmacy make it?+
It is not FDA-approved for human use and is sold only as a research chemical. On 23 July 2026 the FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee voted 7 – 5 with 2 abstentions to recommend adding MOTS-c to the 503A bulks list, going against FDA’s own reviewers, who had proposed it not be added. That vote is advisory and not binding, and formal rulemaking would take roughly 8 – 12 months, so compounding pharmacies currently have no clear legal authority to prepare it.
Will it show up on a drug test?+
If you compete in a tested sport, assume yes and stay away from it. MOTS-c is prohibited at all times under WADA section S4.4.1, listed as an AMPK activator alongside AICAR and BAM15. Because there is no approved therapeutic use for it, USADA states that no therapeutic use exemption can be granted, meaning any use at all carries the risk of an anti-doping violation with no available defence.
Sources
Mouse work, the CB4211 analog trial, anti-doping guidance and the FDA compounding record. Figures drawn from mice, from CB4211 or from convention are labelled above.
- Reynolds et al. 2021: MOTS-c, exercise and age-dependent decline (Nature Communications)
- Lee et al. 2015: MOTS-c, the original mitochondrial-derived peptide paper (Cell Metabolism)
- ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03998514, the CB4211 Phase 1a/1b trial
- CohBar: AASLD 2021 poster on CB4211 (PDF)
- CohBar: topline Phase 1a/1b results for CB4211
- USADA: What is MOTS-c peptide?
- Federal Register: Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting notice and public docket
- GovInfo: full text of the same Federal Register notice
- FDA: July 23 – 24, 2026 Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting
- Pharmaceutical Executive: FDA panel votes to loosen restrictions on four peptides
- NCPA: advisory committee nominates six peptides for pharmacy compounding
- Cognitive Vitality (ADDF): MOTS-c evidence report (PDF)
- PubMed Central: MOTS-c mechanism and metabolism review (PMC9570330)
- PubMed Central: MOTS-c and exercise adaptation review (PMC9905433)
- PubMed: record 41966639
Disclaimer: For informational and research purposes only; not medical advice. MOTS-c is not approved by the FDA for human use, has never completed a published human clinical trial, and is sold as a research chemical; it is also prohibited at all times in tested sport under WADA S4.4.1. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting any peptide protocol. PeptideDeck is not responsible for individual use.