CJC-1295 Dosing: With DAC vs Without DAC

Search “CJC-1295 dosing” and you will find confident microgram charts on forums and clinic blog posts — “100 mcg twice a day,” “2 mg once weekly,” “1,296 mcg per dose.” It is worth being clear about what those numbers are and are not. CJC-1295 is a research-grade growth-hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) analog. It is not an FDA-approved drug, there is no FDA-approved dose, and no regulator has set a label. Every dosing protocol you will read is a clinic or community convention extrapolated from a small amount of human pharmacology — not from large dosing trials. This guide walks through what those conventions are, where the real evidence sits, and why the single most important fork is whether the peptide carries the “DAC” modification.

The one distinction that changes everything: DAC vs no-DAC

“CJC-1295” is used loosely to mean two different molecules, and they are dosed on completely different schedules.

CJC-1295 with DAC is the original compound. DAC stands for Drug Affinity Complex — a small chemical group that lets the peptide bind to albumin in your blood, which dramatically extends its half-life. In the one well-known human study, a single injection of CJC-1295 with DAC raised growth hormone and IGF-1 for days, not hours, and IGF-1 stayed elevated for up to a week or more after a single dose¹. That long tail is the entire point of DAC, and it is why with-DAC protocols are dosed roughly once or twice weekly.

CJC-1295 without DAC — frequently sold under the research name Modified GRF(1-29) or “mod-GRF” — has no albumin anchor. It behaves much more like sermorelin: a short pulse of GH release lasting on the order of minutes to a couple of hours, then gone. Because the effect is brief, no-DAC protocols are dosed daily, often more than once a day, typically at night to mimic the body's natural overnight GH pulse². (No-DAC is much closer to sermorelin pharmacologically — we compare them directly in sermorelin vs CJC-1295.)

So before any number means anything, you have to know which molecule you have. A “weekly” dose of the no-DAC version would be pharmacologically pointless; a “twice-daily” schedule for the with-DAC version stacks a long-acting drug on top of itself.

What the clinic-protocol doses actually are

With that caveat front and center, here are the conventions that circulate — presented as conventions, not endorsements.

For CJC-1295 with DAC, the human study that anchors everything used single subcutaneous doses in the range of roughly 30 to 60 mcg per kilogram of body weight, and even the lowest doses produced multi-day GH and IGF-1 elevations¹. Real-world clinic protocols are far more conservative than that per-kg range and are usually quoted as a flat weekly amount (commonly cited around 1–2 mg per week, sometimes split into two injections). The honest summary: the published evidence shows the drug works pharmacologically at a single dose, but it does not establish an optimal maintenance dose, a safe long-term dose, or a dosing schedule validated over months.

For CJC-1295 without DAC / mod-GRF(1-29), protocols mirror sermorelin: small microgram doses (commonly cited around 100 mcg) injected at bedtime on an empty stomach, sometimes a second daytime dose, frequently paired with a ghrelin-receptor secretagogue. The rationale for nighttime dosing is that GH is released in pulses, the largest of which occurs in early sleep, and a short-acting GHRH analog given then reinforces a natural pulse rather than flattening it². There is no controlled human dosing trial of mod-GRF(1-29) specifically; the schedule is inferred from sermorelin and GHRH(1-29) physiology.

Why CJC-1295 is so often paired with a GHRP

Most dosing discussions don't stop at CJC-1295 — they pair it with a growth-hormone-releasing peptide (GHRP) such as ipamorelin. This is not arbitrary. GHRH analogs and ghrelin-receptor secretagogues act on two different receptors, and when given together they produce more GH release than either alone. In healthy men, a GHRP given with GHRH produced a synergistic GH response well beyond the sum of the two given separately³, and chronic GHRP administration studies confirm the two pathways are genuinely complementary⁴. That synergy is the pharmacological basis for the popular CJC-1295 + ipamorelin pairing — but note that “stronger GH pulse” is a lab-marker finding, not proof of better body-composition or wellness outcomes. (We break down the combination in the sermorelin + ipamorelin stack, and ipamorelin's own protocol in ipamorelin dosage & results.)

What dosing can't overcome

A point the dose charts rarely make: more CJC-1295 does not linearly mean more growth hormone. The pituitary's GH output is held in check by somatostatin and is blunted by age, obesity, and visceral fat. Studies of GH secretion show that older adults and people with higher visceral adiposity release substantially less GH to the same stimulus⁵ — so the same protocol can do far less in the exact population most likely to be seeking it. Pushing the dose higher to compensate is precisely where side-effect risk (water retention, joint aches, numbness, elevated IGF-1, and effects on insulin sensitivity) climbs. The GH/IGF-1 axis is the thing to monitor, not the milligrams on the vial.

The honest bottom line on dosing

CJC-1295 dosing is research-grade and protocol-driven, not FDA-established. The real, load-bearing facts are narrow: with-DAC raises GH and IGF-1 for days off a single injection, which is why it's dosed weekly¹; no-DAC is short-acting and dosed daily like sermorelin²; and pairing a GHRH analog with a GHRP produces a genuinely larger GH pulse³. Everything past that — the specific microgram numbers, the “optimal” split, the cycle lengths — is clinic convention, not trial-validated, and none of it has been shown to deliver the muscle, fat-loss, or anti-aging outcomes people buy it for. If you are weighing this peptide at all, the dose is the least of it; the source quality, the lack of approval, and proper IGF-1/glucose monitoring matter more. For the wider evidence picture on GHRH-class peptides, start with our pillar guide to sermorelin and GH-axis evidence, our accounting of CJC-1295's benefits and limits, and our ranked guide to the best sermorelin providers if you want to see how the clinics offering these compounds compare on oversight.