Kisspeptin Dosage: A Programme That Actually Ran
The sequence behind the numbers, in order, and the one step that never happened.
The usual sequence for a compound in this category is short, because it stops early. Animal work, then nothing. Kisspeptin gets much further along that sequence than almost anything else discussed here, which makes the point where it stops more informative than usual.
Step 1: mechanism, and it is well characterised
Kisspeptin signals through its receptor to drive GnRH release, and downstream of that, luteinising hormone. This is not a contested mechanism or an inference from a cell culture. It is established reproductive physiology, with several thousand PubMed records behind the peptide and its receptor.
Step 2: human trials, and they completed
ClinicalTrials.gov lists roughly 45 studies under the name: four Phase 3, nine Phase 2, eleven Phase 1, with around 26 recorded as completed.
The sponsors matter as much as the count. The largest blocks are an individual academic investigator and Massachusetts General Hospital, with Imperial College London and university hospitals elsewhere contributing more. This is a university research programme, not a vendor filing.
Step 3: what those trials asked
Delayed puberty, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, fertility, and use as a trigger in assisted reproduction. The quantities were chosen to produce a hormonal response that an assay would read, in a defined patient group, under supervision.
That is a real dosing context. It is also a narrow one, and it belongs to the reproductive axis rather than to anything else the compound is marketed for.
Step 4: the step that never happened
No regulator has approved kisspeptin as a marketed medicine. There is no label, no authorised quantity and nobody accountable for a number.
That gap is where a kisspeptin dosage chart sits. Its raw material is better than the rodent conversions behind most peptide charts, because published human studies exist to restate. What it cannot do is present a figure as authorised, and the honest ones name the population and the endpoint each number came from.
Why the distinction sharpens here
For a compound with no human data, a chart with no citations is obviously unsupported. For this one, the citations exist, which means a chart that omits them is choosing to. That is a different kind of omission, and worth noticing.