Khavinson oral calf-brain peptide extract (Cytomax A-5); one in-house report, no first-hand users found.
#20 of 23 supplements · updated
Onset
Nothing acute; the developer's report assessed patients at the end of a 10-20 day course.
Lasts
Taken as 10-30 day courses once or twice a year; any claimed benefit is said to persist for months.
Access
Supplement
Cost / month
≈ €49–110
researchers' estimate; no listing to price
Users report
No first-hand Reddit reports could be found. Cerluten turns up only in shopping lists and questions (a visual-snow user listing it beside Cortagen, Cortexin and Pinealon, a glaucoma thread asking whether brain bioregulators help), never with an outcome. The score is a placeholder for 'unknown', informed only by how often users of its sibling capsules (Pinealon, other Cytomaxes) report feeling nothing. Felt nothing: No first-hand reports found, so nothing can be counted.
Best effects
Claimed: better attention, memory and stamina after a 10-20 day course (developer report only) · claimed: fewer headaches and less fatigue in people after brain injury or stroke (developer report only)
Downsides
No measurable effect expected acutely; judged over weeks · cost of repeated 20-60 capsule courses · nobody has shown that intact peptides survive digestion
Watch
Made from the central nervous tissue of calves (up to 12 months old): bovine brain is the tissue that carried BSE to people, so a prion route is theoretical rather than impossible, though calves under 12 months fall outside the EU specified-risk-material rule · Allergy to bovine proteins
Evidence
Small human studies — One open, non-randomised 48-patient report from the developer's own clinic (vs 37 on standard care), never published in a journal; nothing on PubMed names Cerluten. Related evidence is for different products: injected Cortexin and the synthetic Pinealon and Cortagen.
Caveat
Consistent with Pinealon (kept) and unlike Epitalon (excluded): Cerluten makes no telomerase or cell-division claim, so the theoretical harm routes are prion contamination of bovine nervous tissue and allergy, not tumour promotion. The prion route is remote with calves under 12 months, but it is the reason this is not rated clean. Efficacy rests on one unpublished open report from the developer, and nobody has measured intact peptides in blood after an oral capsule.
Typical use
1-2 capsules (10-20 mg peptide complex) two or three times a day before meals for 10-20 days, or 2 capsules a day for 30 days; repeated after 3-6 months (manufacturer).
Getting it
Sold as a Russian food supplement (БАД, labelled 'not a medicine') in 20- or 60-capsule packs of 10 mg peptide complex per capsule, through bioregulator shops in the EU, UK and US. It is not the injectable Cortexin, nor the synthetic Pinealon or Cortagen.
Stacked with
Pinealon: Sellers pair the extract with the synthetic brain tripeptide, a 'Cytogen then Cytomax' sequence the Khavinson catalogue itself recommends. · Cortexin or Cortagen: Listed together by visual-snow and post-concussion users shopping for brain bioregulators; no outcome was reported.
Safety
Tier by safety barStrict CautionBalanced CleanEvidence only Clean
Seen harmMechanismData gapSilent harmProduct
Seen harm 0/3
No serious adverse event has been reported, but the zero reflects how little documented exposure there is (one 48-patient developer report that noted no adverse effects, and no first-hand user reports found), not reassurance. Cerluten institute clinical report (English translation) ↗
Mechanism 1/3
The peptides themselves have no named harm pathway. The one route to serious harm is theoretical: prion contamination of bovine central nervous tissue, the tissue that transmitted BSE to people. It is remote because the source is calves under 12 months, below the EU's specified-risk-material age for bovine brain, so it stays a speculative 1. Regulation (EC) 999/2001 Annex V: specified risk material ↗Peptide Product: Cerluten (brain peptide complex A-5) ↗
Data gap 2/3
A Russian food supplement, not an approved drug anywhere. The only human data are one open, non-randomised report of 48 patients against 37 controls from the developer's clinic, never published in a journal; the Cortexin trials concern an injected extract and do not bridge to oral capsules. Cerluten institute clinical report (English translation) ↗
Silent harm 1/3
Rated on the most plausible harm, an allergic or digestive reaction to a bovine protein extract, which would be noticed and stop with the capsules. The theoretical prion route behind the mechanism score would be silent for years, but at mechanism 1 it does not set this axis.
Pregnancy or breastfeeding (no human reproductive data) · Allergy to bovine (beef) proteins · Anyone avoiding bovine nervous tissue on BSE/prion grounds
Each bead is one amino acid in the peptide's chain, coloured by its side chain: grey for non-polar, cyan for polar, blue for positively charged and fuchsia for negatively charged. Length and mix tell related peptides apart at a glance, from a two-residue dipeptide like carnosine to a 43-residue protein like thymosin beta-4. The colours describe chemistry only and predict neither effect nor safety.
non-polarpolarpositivenegative
Report grades
Every first-hand Reddit or X report is graded on its own, from glowing through positive, mixed, nothing and negative to bad reaction, and the bar shows how those grades split. Posts that look vendor-adjacent stay on the peptide's page but are left out of the counts.
GlowingPositiveMixedNothingNegativeBad reaction
% positive
The share of a peptide's graded Reddit and X reports that are glowing or positive, vendor-adjacent posts left out. A peptide with few reports is pulled toward the average of all reports, as if it had eight average ones besides its own, so two glowing posts cannot top the list. Kept peptides rank by the same reports' mean grade, shrunk the same way, and excluded ones follow in that order.
Researcher estimate
No first-hand report of this peptide has been graded yet, so the figure is the researchers' own rating out of 10 from what they read about it. It ranks alongside the computed scores until reports arrive.
Safety tier
Each peptide is tiered clean, caution or excluded from its five risk axes under the chosen safety bar. An excluded peptide has a plausible route to serious harm, so it stays listed with the reason but ranks behind every other entry, however good its reviews.
Safety bar
The safety bar sets how much risk it takes to exclude a peptide. Strict: out on any serious mechanism with little human data, or any documented serious harm. Balanced: out on documented serious harm (unless it is obvious, reversible and from a regulated product), or a serious mechanism whose harm would be silent with no human data at all. Evidence only: out only on documented serious harm in humans that is lasting, delayed or from grey-market product.
Seen harm
Documented serious adverse events in humans, from 0 for none despite real exposure to 3 for deaths or several well-documented serious harms. Serious means a hospital or emergency visit or harm lasting weeks, so a headache or a bad night does not count.
Mechanism
A plausible biological route to serious harm at the doses people use, such as growth-factor signalling, hormone-axis suppression, heart or blood-pressure effects or immune activation. It runs from 0 when none is known to 3 when a dangerous pathway has been shown in living animals.
Data gap
How little human safety data exists for the molecule actually sold, from 0 for an approved drug with large trials and years of use to 3 for no human safety data at all. A modified analogue does not inherit its parent's trials.
Silent harm
Whether the feared harm would show quickly or stay hidden, from 0 when it is obvious and goes on stopping to 3 when it is silent and delayed, like tumour promotion or slow organ damage. User reports cannot reveal a harm that takes years to appear, so a high score here limits what good reviews can tell you.
Product
The risk of what people actually buy, from 0 for a regulated pharmacy or supplement product taken by mouth or on the skin to 3 for a grey-market injectable. In one dataset of 6,441 grey-market samples, 42–71% failed basic quality criteria and 15% carried endotoxin.
Evidence
The strongest kind of study behind the peptide's effects, from an approved drug through human controlled trials and small human studies to animal work or nothing of its own. Animal results often fail to carry over to people.
Access
How people get it: as an approved drug, a compounded prescription, an over-the-counter supplement or from the grey market, where nobody checks the vial. The channel decides both the legal position and the risk of a bad batch.
Price per month
Thirty days of the typical dose, from its low end to its high end, priced at the listing a careful buyer would choose: in stock, from a shop scoring 4 of 5 on trust (third-party tested where no score is set), failing that 3, a pure pack before a blend, a European shop first, then the cheapest per mg. The range is the dose's, not the shops'. A per-dose amount counts once a day unless the dose says otherwise. Prices are in euros at ECB rates of 2026-10-29, before shipping; the shop table keeps each listing's price per mg, per gram for bulk supplements. Where no listing can be priced the researchers' own estimate stands in, and says so.
Dose users report
The middle half of the daily doses stated in at least five first-hand reports, vendor posts left out. Where its middle sits more than twice above or below the declared dose, the month is priced at it as well, since what people take is what they pay for.
Testing
Whether the shop publishes lab results: third-party tested means an independent lab checks each batch, own COA means the shop's own certificate of analysis, and no public tests means neither. A certificate shows purity, not safety.
Added peptide
Some packs sold under one peptide's name hold a second one, such as 5 mg GHK-Cu in a nasal kit, stated only in the description. Sprayed in the nose or injected it reaches the blood like an injection, so it carries the risk of that route and is tiered as the injectable form, whatever its tier on the skin. A pack whose page gives no contents list may hold more than its name.