Best Sermorelin Source: 35 Points on Testing, 10 on Price

Five criteria, weighted to sum to 100. Each source is then scored from 0 to 5 on each criterion, and the weighted contribution is the score divided by 5 and multiplied by the weight.

Two of those criteria will look unusual on a buying page. Oversight is included because it is a real property of a source and excluding it would flatter the cheapest option. Price is capped at 10 because a rate is only meaningful once the four criteria above it have been satisfied.

Five source types, scored on the weights above. The totals are weighted points out of 100.

Take the second row as the worked example. Testing scope scores 2 out of 5, because the certificate for lot 38-01260229 reports purity and quantity and neither endotoxin nor sterility, and 35 × 2 ÷ 5 is 14. Identity scores 5, because the printed sequence resolves to 29 residues and the published mass of 3357.9 g/mol, so 20 × 5 ÷ 5 is 20. Recourse scores 4 for domestic dispatch and written terms, which is 16. Oversight scores 0, because nothing in the transaction involves a clinician. Price scores 5, because $36.00 and a 10 mg label divide to $3.60 per milligram. Sum: 14 plus 20 plus 16 plus 0 plus 10, or 60.

Of the five criteria, testing scope is the only one that is both invisible after purchase and impossible to reconstruct from the others. Purity does not imply sterility. A named laboratory does not imply a wider panel. A high assay result says nothing about what a run was not looking for.

The regulatory framing supports the weighting rather than the other way round. FDA's stated basis for placing several growth hormone secretagogues on its Category 2 bulk substances list is a risk for immunogenicity due to the potential for aggregation and peptide-related impurities. That is a statement about physical form and impurity profile, which is exactly the ground a purity-and-quantity certificate leaves uncovered.

Sermorelin is absent from the Category 2 list in every section, and that absence is meaningful in a different way, covered further down. It does not answer the testing question. It means the question was never escalated to a listing, not that a given lot was tested for anything in particular.

Report scope as a property of a lot, never of a vendor. The correct sentence is that this lot's certificate covers purity and quantity. The incorrect one, which appears on plenty of comparison pages, is that a vendor does not test for endotoxin. Nobody reading a single certificate knows that.

Second place on 60 points is a real result, not a rhetorical concession, and the deductions are specific.

• Minus 21 on testing scope. Lot 38-01260229 reports 99.79 % purity by HPLC-UV-MS across 4 detected peaks and a measured quantity of 11.31 mg against a 10 mg label. It reports no endotoxin test and no sterility test. For a lyophilised powder intended to be dissolved, that is the most consequential gap on the page.
• Minus 15 on oversight. Structural rather than a criticism. A research listing has no clinician in it by definition, and no storefront can fix that.
• Minus 4 on recourse. Domestic dispatch and written refund terms score well, and the deduction is for the ordinary distance between a published policy and an exercised one.

What it wins on is equally specific: full marks on identity, because the certificate's printed sequence resolves to GHRH(1-29) amide with a C-terminal amide and matches the published formula C149H246N44O42S at 3357.9 g/mol, and full marks on price transparency, because a stated price and a stated mass divide to $3.60 per labelled milligram or $3.18 on the assayed 11.31 mg. Our supplier criteria page applies a different weighting to the same listing and reaches a similar shape of answer.

The top row wins on oversight and recourse and would win on almost any weighting that includes them, and the reason it is available at all is specific to this compound.

Sermorelin was approved. EMD Serono marketed it as Geref under NDA 019863 for diagnostic use and NDA 020443 for therapeutic use, the latter approved on 1997-09-26. Both are discontinued, and the FDA record carries the Federal Register determination that the product was not discontinued or withdrawn for safety or effectiveness reasons. There is no current US label. Section 503A allows a compounding pharmacy to work from a bulk substance that was a component of an approved drug product, which sermorelin acetate was.

The compounds sold next to it do not have that. Ibutamoren mesylate is listed under both 503A and 503B in the Category 2 list, ipamorelin acetate under 503B, and GHRP-2, GHRP-6 and kisspeptin-10 appear as well. Several more, including BPC-157, Melanotan II, Semax, MOTS-c and epitalon, were nominated and withdrawn.

It scores 0 on price transparency for the same reason it scores 15 on oversight: a fill is priced per prescription and a programme is priced per month, and neither publishes a mass. That is not a criticism of the route, it is a fact about what can be divided. Our prescription route page covers what a prescriber asks for.

A scoring method is only useful if it can change its mind, so here is what would move these totals.

A later lot with a wider panel. If a certificate arrived reporting endotoxin and sterility alongside purity and quantity, the testing score would rise from 2 to 4 or 5, adding 14 to 21 points and putting the research listing level with or above the prescription route on this weighting. Scope is a lot property, so this is a realistic change rather than a hypothetical one.

A price change. It would move almost nothing. Price carries 10 points, so even halving the rate from $3.60 to $1.80 per labelled milligram cannot add more than a couple of points to a row already scoring 5 out of 5 on transparency. That is the weighting working as intended.

A lost certificate. If a lot shipped without a lot-specific document, testing would fall to 0 and identity would fall with it, taking the total from 60 to the high twenties. The gap between the second and fourth rows is almost entirely a document.

None of this speaks to whether the compound does what the market says. The approved indications were paediatric growth hormone deficiency and pituitary diagnostics, PubMed returns 332 records mentioning it and zero alongside anti-aging, and ClinicalTrials.gov registers no studies naming it. A best source is still only the best source of a thing whose evidence base you should look at separately.