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PeptideAI
Animal data onlyimmunelongevityinflammation

Vilon

The synthetic dipeptide distilled out of Thymalin - two amino acids, Lys-Glu, used in short courses to nudge T-cell function and immunosenescence in the same direction as the thymus extract without the animal-tissue baggage.

Also known as Lys-Glu, KE, KE dipeptide, thymus Cytogen, Vilonum, Vilon

Animal data only — Rodent or other animal studies. Dose translation to humans is genuinely uncertain.

The reproducible published evidence for Vilon is rodent and cell-culture work from Khavinson's institute showing restored lymphocyte function and reduced tumour incidence in aged animals, plus biophysical modelling of DNA binding. Small Russian clinical series in elderly and post-operative patients exist but are unblinded, uncontrolled and not independently retrievable in English. Nobody outside the originating group has replicated any of it.

How it works

Vilon is Lys-Glu, small enough to cross the cell and nuclear membranes without a transporter. Khavinson's group and collaborators have published molecular modelling and biophysical work arguing that these charged short peptides bind double-stranded DNA in the major groove and interact with histone proteins, loosening heterochromatin and allowing previously silenced genes to transcribe again. In aged animals Vilon is reported to restore lymphocyte proliferative capacity, raise interleukin-2 production and normalise CD4/CD8 ratios, and in rodent carcinogenesis models to reduce tumour incidence. The DNA-binding model is a plausible and partly supported hypothesis, not an established mechanism - there is no crystal structure of Vilon bound to a promoter.

Targets: T-lymphocyte differentiation, Chromatin/histone complexes, Interleukin-2 expression

Dosing

ProtocolDoseFrequencyRoute
Research-market injectable courseAny time of day.1 mg – 2 mgonce daily for 10 to 20 dayssubcutaneous
Low-dose protocol closer to the Russian literatureAny time of day.10 mcg – 100 mcgonce daily or every other day for 10 daysintramuscular
  • · This is the dose the Western research-chemical market has settled on: 1-2 mg per day from a 20 mg vial. It is not derived from any published dose-finding study.
  • · Russian work used microgram-range doses. The hundred-to-thousand-fold gap between this and the vial-market protocol is real and unresolved - if you want to stay closer to the actual literature, this is the range.

Cycling

Ten to twenty days on, then off for three to six months. Nobody in the source literature ran this continuously.

Work out your exact syringe units →

Pharmacology

Half-life
Not measured in humans. A free dipeptide is degraded by serum peptidases within minutes, so any effect must outlast plasma exposure by a wide margin.
Onset
Immune marker changes are described over a 10-day course; nothing acute is expected.
Routes
subcutaneous, intramuscular, oral
Molecule
Synthetic dipeptide
Sequence length
2 amino acids
Molecular weight
275.3 Da

Handling

Diluent
Bacteriostatic water
Typical mix
2 or 3 mL
Vial sizes
10, 20 mg
Lyophilised
Room temperature is fine for a few weeks in transit; refrigerate or freeze for anything longer.
Reconstituted
Refrigerated, use within about 30 days.
Light sensitive
Yes — keep it out of the light

Mixing

20 mg in 2 mL gives 10 mg/mL, so 1 mg is 10 units on an insulin syringe. Swirl, never shake.

Side effects

  • commonInjection-site redness— Transient.
  • commonNo consistent systemic side effects reported— The safety record is quiet, but it comes from small, unblinded studies - absence of reported effects is not the same as demonstrated safety.
  • rareAutoimmune symptom flare— Theoretical but mechanistically coherent for an immune-directed peptide.

Do not use if

  • Active autoimmune disease - immune stimulation is the intended effect.
  • Deliberate immunosuppression, including transplant recipients.
  • Pregnancy and breastfeeding - no data.

Combining it

  • redundantthymalin-cytomax — Vilon is the synthetic active core of Thymalin; run one or the other.
  • redundantthymosin-alpha-1 — Same target tissue with far better evidence behind thymosin alpha-1.
  • conflictimmunosuppressants — Opposed pharmacology.

What to monitor

  • · CBC with differential before and after a course if you want any objective read at all.
  • · Track infection frequency over the following months - that is the outcome the compound is sold on.

Legal status

Not approved for human use in the US, UK or EU; sold as a research chemical. Registered in Russia.

References

  • Khavinson, Linkova & Tarnovskaya, short peptides regulate gene expression (Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine) (preclinical)
  • Khavinson & Malinin, Gerontological Aspects of Genome Peptide Regulation (Karger monograph) (review)
  • Anisimov & Khavinson, peptide bioregulation of aging: results and prospects (Biogerontology) (review)

Mechanism in depth

The Khavinson group's model is that very short peptides enter the nucleus and bind specific DNA sequences and histones, acting as tissue-specific transcriptional regulators. The 2021 Molecules systematic review from the group sets out the case, including molecular docking work on peptide-DNA interaction and cell-culture experiments on differentiation. Take the model seriously enough to understand what would need to be true for it to work: a dipeptide would have to survive plasma, cross the plasma membrane, cross the nuclear envelope, and achieve enough sequence-specific affinity from two residues to discriminate one promoter from another. Two amino acids provide very little information content for sequence-specific binding, which is the central theoretical objection and the reason the model has not been adopted outside the originating programme. What is better documented is the outcome level rather than the mechanism level: in the group's own rodent work, Vilon inhibited spontaneous tumour growth and increased lifespan in mice, and reduced biological age markers. Those are real published results with real data behind them. They come almost entirely from one research programme, and the independent replication that would move them from interesting to established has not happened in the twenty-five years since.

What usually goes wrong

The realistic failure mode is not toxicity, it is measurement. Nothing observable happens, the pulsed dosing schedule means you attribute any seasonal improvement to the last course, and there is no biomarker to check against. The dosing-accuracy problem is real: a 20 mg vial in 2 mL gives 10 mg/mL, which makes a 200 mcg dose two units on a U-100 syringe - a volume small enough that syringe dead space and technique dominate the actual delivered dose. Use a larger diluent volume purely for measurement precision. On safety, the absence of reported adverse effects reflects the absence of systematic study, and the sensible contraindication in active malignancy is inference from the claimed gene-expression and proliferation effects rather than an observed signal. Finally: the Khavinson rodent tumour and lifespan results are frequently cited in vendor material as though they were human findings. They are mouse studies from one laboratory.

Bloodwork worth running

MarkerWhenWhy it matters
CBC with differentialBaseline and at the end of a five to ten day course.The only objective readout available for a compound with no biomarker. Take it before and after a course so you have something other than a feeling to reason from.Act if: No established threshold. Interpret cautiously - a ten day window is short relative to normal variation in lymphocyte counts.
Lymphocyte subset panel (CD4:CD8) if you are running this specifically for immunosenescenceBaseline and eight to twelve weeks after a course, since the claimed effects are described as outlasting the dosing period.The rodent claim is CD4/CD8 normalisation. If that is your reason for taking it, measure it rather than assume it.Act if: No change across two courses over a year means the compound is not doing the thing it is sold for.

Pharmacokinetics

Metabolism
Hydrolysis to free L-lysine and L-glutamate.
Elimination
Amino acid recycling.

Receptor targets

  • Genomic DNA promoter regions (proposed, not confirmed) — No binding constant has been independently published. The docking work is computational.

    Proposed modulation of transcription of tissue-specific genes in thymic epithelium and lymphoid tissue. This is the originating group's model rather than an established pathway.

  • T-cell subsets (CD4/CD8 balance) in aged animals — Not applicable

    Reported restoration of subset balance and lymphocyte proliferative response in aged rodents.

What to expect, and when

Minutes: the dipeptide is hydrolysed. Days 1-10: the course itself, during which nothing is expected to be perceptible. Weeks to months: the entire model depends on effects outlasting the molecule, and the group describes changes over this timescale. Two to three courses a year: the intended pattern. There is no acute effect to feel, and anyone reporting one within hours is reporting an injection response or expectation.

Stacking and comparisons

Vilon is almost always run inside a Khavinson-style stack alongside Epitalon, and that pairing is convention rather than data - no study has tested the combination. Vilon, Thymogen and Crystagen are three short peptides making the same claim on the same tissue; running all three is buying the same story three times. Vilon was developed as the synthetic minimal analogue of thymalin's activity, so stacking it with thymalin is explicitly redundant. If you want a thymic-immune compound with evidence behind it in the same stack, thymosin alpha-1 is the one that has been tested.

Vilon has better primary literature than Crystagen or Thymogen, in the sense that indexed English-language papers with lifespan and tumour-incidence endpoints actually exist. It has dramatically worse evidence than thymosin alpha-1, thymopentin or lactoferrin, none of which rely on a single research programme. The important framing is that this is animal-tier evidence being sold into a human longevity market, and the gap between 'increased median lifespan in mice from one laboratory' and 'slows immunosenescence in you' is the whole of drug development. Within the bioregulator family, Vilon is the immune member and Epitalon is the pineal member, and they are usually discussed together for reasons of convention rather than pharmacology.

Rough cost

$30–$80/month. A 10-20 mg vial covers a full five to ten day course at 100-500 mcg daily with material left over. Because the protocol is two to three courses a year, the annualised cost is far below this monthly figure - this is the cost during an active course.

Genuinely uncertain

  • No human pharmacokinetics, no human trial, no biomarker. Every quantitative pharmacokinetic field is null because the data do not exist.
  • The DNA-binding mechanism is the originating group's model. Independent structural or biochemical confirmation of sequence-specific promoter binding by a dipeptide was not found.
  • Whether the oral capsule form delivers any intact peptide is unresolved and theoretically doubtful.
  • The 70-670 mcg daily dose range in circulation has no clear published derivation. It appears to be supplier convention.
  • The rodent lifespan and tumour results come from a single research programme and have not been independently replicated in the twenty-five years since publication.
  • Small Russian clinical series are referenced in the secondary literature but could not be located or assessed in indexed form in this session.

Papers