Livagen

Mechanism of action

Khavinson-group in-vitro studies report that Livagen causes chromatin decondensation in aged lymphocytes and restores transcriptional activity at heterochromatin regions that become silenced with age. The hypothesized in-vivo effect is restoration of immune-cell gene expression in aged animals.

Primary uses

• Investigational support for hepatic and immune aging (Russian literature)
• Research into chromatin aging

Typical dosing

Educational information, not medical advice. The doses on this page come from approved labels, published studies and, where no study exists, amounts reported by users. None is a recommendation for you. An unapproved compound has no established safe or effective human dose, and products sold for “research use only” are not made or tested for people. Talk to a doctor before acting on anything on this site, including before you start, stop or change any medicine or dose. Full medical disclaimer.

Regulatory status

Not FDA-approved. Marketed in Russia as a bioregulator supplement.

Status as of this entry's last review, October 4, 2026. Approvals, compounding rules and sport rules change; the regulatory tracker is checked more often.

What we checked

Livagen (Lys-Glu-Asp-Ala) appears in about 20 papers indexed on PubMed, most studying chromatin in white blood cells from elderly donors. Its review card is below; this section adds identity, status and those studies.

Identity, computed

NLM MeSH supplementary record C473185 lists Livagen as lysyl-glutamyl-aspartylalanine, and PubChem record 87919683 gives C18H31N5O9 at 461.5 g/mol, which the calculator reproduces. An earlier version of this entry gave C18H32N6O8 and 460.48, the C-terminal amide form, which nothing in the sources describes; it was corrected on October 4, 2026.

Regulatory status, read October 5, 2026

Drugs@FDA: 0 records for “livagen”. EMA medicines list: 0 records for “livagen”. Run for semaglutide, the same queries return 6 and 5 records (and the registry search 84 trials), so a zero here is an absence, not a broken search. Not named on the WADA 2026 and 2027 Prohibited Lists. As a substance with no current approval for human therapeutic use, it falls under section S0 (non-approved substances), which is prohibited at all times; the lists were read on September 27, 2026.

What the maker or sellers claim

Claim, from its developers and Russian sellers: Livagen supports the liver and reverses age-related changes in the genome. The studies below are in cultured cells, and none tests the liver in people.

About the family, not this compound

The Khavinson peptides are di- to tetrapeptides from the Saint Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, most first isolated from animal tissue and later made synthetically; the group proposes that they enter the nucleus and change gene expression. Nearly all indexed work comes from that group and its collaborators.

What the chromatin studies show

In lymphocytes cultured from people aged 80 to 91, Livagen reversed part of the age-related condensation of chromatin, reactivating regions that had become inactive; cobalt chloride raised chromosome damage more in cells from old donors (2007). Later papers from the same Georgian and Russian groups, by their titles, extend this to lymphocytes from patients with cardiomyopathy, atherosclerosis and breast cancer. All of it is cells in a dish.

What we looked for and did not find

No trial in people, no animal study of the liver in the indexed abstracts we read, no registry record and no dose from a controlled study.

What the studies show

Livagen is the tetrapeptide Lys-Glu-Asp-Ala (KEDA) from the Russian short-peptide programme. The one paper below whose title names it is a review by researchers in that programme; it summarises animal and laboratory work rather than trials in people.

References

1. [pubmed] Khavinson VK, et al. "Activating effect of peptides Lys-Glu-Asp-Ala and Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly on chromatin of old lymphocytes." Bull Exp Biol Med, 2011;150:505-507.
2. [review] Khavinson VK, Malinin VV. "Gerontological aspects of genome peptide regulation." Karger AG, Basel, 2005.
3. [review] Kuznik BI, et al. "[The influence of polypeptide liver complex and tetrapeptide KEDA on organism physiological function in norm and age-related pathology.]." Adv Gerontol, 2020;33(1):159-164. PMID: 32362099.
4. [pubmed] Lezhava T, et al. "Activation of pericentromeric and telomeric heterochromatin in cultured lymphocytes from old individuals." Ann N Y Acad Sci, 2007;1100:387-99. PMID: 17460203.

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