ARA-290: the tissue-protective half of erythropoietin, without the red cells
Erythropoietin does two unrelated jobs through two different receptors. This peptide was engineered to keep one of them and drop the other, which is an unusually clean piece of drug design — and it has the phase II data to discuss.
Regulatory status. Phase II clinical trials completed for small fiber neuropathy. Orphan Drug Designation for sarcoidosis. Not FDA approved. That is the app’s own field, reproduced here rather than summarised. It means no regulator has reviewed a manufacturer’s evidence for identity, purity, potency or safety in people for this compound, so nothing below is a marketing claim about a product you can buy.
Purity, identity and concentration are therefore unverified by anyone but whoever made the vial. The storage rule in the fact box below is general practice for this formulation rather than a specification for a particular product: General handling practice for this formulation. Your supplier’s own insert or COA overrides anything here.
This page names no vendor, no clinic and no testing service, and there is no discount code anywhere on this site — the moment a page like this recommends where to buy, it stops being information.
- Also known as
- Cibinetide, Helix B peptide
- Class
- Peptide
- Regulatory status
- Phase II clinical trials completed for small fiber neuropathy. Orphan Drug Designation for sarcoidosis. Not FDA approved.
- Before mixing
- Sealed powder tolerates room temperature in transit, but keep it refrigerated at 2–8 °C (36–46 °F) for anything beyond a few weeks, or frozen for months. Keep it dark — the carton it shipped in is doing a job.
- After mixing
- Once reconstituted with bacteriostatic water: refrigerate at 2–8 °C and use within about 28 days. The benzyl alcohol in bacteriostatic water is what buys that window — plain sterile water has no preservative, so a vial mixed with it should be treated as one sitting only. Kits are usually ten vials: only the one you mixed is on that 28-day clock — the sealed ones keep their own, much longer shelf life, so store them as powder, not as solution.
- What ruins it
- Do not freeze a reconstituted vial. Repeated freeze–thaw is one of the more reliable ways to degrade a peptide.
- Handling caveat
- General handling practice for this formulation. Your supplier’s own insert or COA overrides anything here.
Two receptors, one hormone
Established clinical use Erythropoietin is known for stimulating red cell production, which it does through the classical homodimeric EPO receptor on erythroid precursors. It also has a tissue-protective role — anti-inflammatory, anti-apoptotic, promoting repair after injury — and that runs through a completely different receptor complex, a heterodimer of the EPO receptor and the beta-common receptor, often called the innate repair receptor.
ARA-290, also called cibinetide, is a short peptide corresponding to the helix B surface of erythropoietin: the face that engages the repair receptor and not the erythropoietic one. The design goal was therefore to get the tissue protection without raising haematocrit, and that separation has held in trials — which matters, because raising haematocrit is exactly what makes EPO unusable as a repair therapy and is a concern this site’s readers already track. The haematocrit page covers why.
The app records no half-life for the preparations in circulation, which is why the fact box carries no pharmacokinetic rows.
What phase II reported
Established clinical use ARA-290 has been through controlled human trials, principally in small fibre neuropathy associated with sarcoidosis and in diabetic neuropathy. The reported findings were reductions in neuropathic pain scores and, more interestingly, increases in corneal nerve fibre density measured by confocal microscopy — a structural rather than symptomatic endpoint, which is much harder to produce by expectation.
It holds orphan drug designation for sarcoidosis. Development has not produced an approval, and the trials are phase II: real, controlled, and not large enough or long enough to establish what a phase III would.
That is a considerably stronger position than most research peptides occupy, and it is worth being precise about what it supports. The evidence is for neuropathic pain and nerve fibre density in specific neuropathies. The app’s own drawbacks list notes that body composition data is limited, which is a polite way of saying the general repair and anti-inflammatory uses it gets put to are extrapolation.
The practical position
Animal-only or theoretical There is no approved product, so what is available is research-supply material with identity and purity resting on whoever made it, and it is expensive. This site names no vendor and no testing service.
Monitoring is unusual for this reference in being mostly clinical: pain scales recorded consistently, nerve conduction studies where available, inflammatory markers, and a full blood count — the last one specifically to confirm that haematocrit is not rising, which would suggest the material is not what it claims to be. That is the same mislabelling-detector logic the HGH fragment page describes, and it is one of the more useful checks available on an unapproved compound.
Neuropathic pain is a diagnosable problem with treatments that have evidence behind them, and it is also a symptom of conditions worth identifying — diabetes and B12 deficiency among them. Anyone treating it with an unapproved peptide before that workup has happened is treating a symptom whose cause may be both findable and fixable. That is the conversation to have with a clinician first.
The dosing rows the app records
Off-label or community practice Reproduced from the app’s reference so you can see what it holds, not as a recommendation. Which row applies to a particular person, if any, is a clinical decision this page does not make — and rows describing supraphysiological or post-cycle use are filtered out before this table is built, so what you see here is a subset.
| Label | Amount | Route and frequency | Duration recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neuropathy and Pain | 4mg | SubQ daily | 4-8 weeks |
| Anti-inflammatory and Repair | 2-4mg | SubQ 3-5x weekly | 4-8 weeks |
What the app monitors alongside it
The panel below is the app’s own monitoring note for ARA-290, verbatim. None of the analytes it names has a page here yet.
- Monitoring panel
- Pain scales (VAS/NRS), nerve conduction studies if available, inflammatory markers (CRP), CBC.
Drawbacks and risks the app records
From the app’s own entry, and the fourth item is the honest one: the trials were about neuropathy, and everything else it is used for is extrapolation from them.
- Expensive and difficult to source
- Not FDA approved despite advanced trials
- Injection only
- Trials primarily focused on neuropathy — body composition data limited
- Long-term safety not fully established
- Complex receptor pharmacology
Questions people actually ask
Does it raise haematocrit like EPO?
No — that separation is the entire point of the molecule, and it held in the trials. A rising haematocrit on this compound would suggest the vial contains something else, which is why a full blood count is on the monitoring list.
What did the trials actually measure?
Neuropathic pain scores and corneal nerve fibre density in small fibre neuropathy. The second is a structural endpoint, which makes it more persuasive than a symptom score alone.
Is it approved for anything?
No. It holds orphan drug designation for sarcoidosis, which is a development incentive rather than an approval or an efficacy finding.
Does it help with recovery or body composition?
That has not been studied. The evidence is in neuropathy, and the app’s own drawbacks list says body composition data is limited. Applying a neuropathy result to a training context is extrapolation.
Where the load-bearing numbers come from
Named rather than linked. Publisher URLs move, and a citation that resolves to a 404 two years from now is worse than one you can search for by name — every entry below is findable from the title and year alone.
- Innate repair receptor versus the classical EPO receptor
- The erythropoietin tissue-protection literature and the peptide’s published design rationale
- Phase II findings in small fibre neuropathy
- Controlled trials reporting reduced neuropathic pain and increased corneal nerve fibre density
- Orphan drug designation
- A development incentive for sarcoidosis; not an approval and not an efficacy finding
- Absence of pharmacokinetic data
- app.html holds no half-life or time-to-peak entry for this compound, which is why no such rows appear above
A pain score only means something as a series recorded the same way. TherapyLog keeps it beside the dose.
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