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SLU-PP-332: Ten Papers, No Human Trial, and a Doping Test That Already Exists

SLU-PP-332 is sold as an exercise in a bottle. Its entire published record is ten papers, all preclinical — and two of the ten exist only so anti-doping laboratories can detect it.

Not a peptidePreclinical onlyNo approved product

Caroline S · Published 2026-09-11

Length

Not applicable — a small synthetic molecule, not a chain of amino acids

Sequence

None. SLU-PP-332 is a synthetic agonist of the estrogen-related receptors (ERRα, ERRβ and ERRγ), a class of nuclear receptors inside the cell.

Origin

First described in 2023 by chemists at Saint Louis University, whose initials give the compound its name.

Last reviewed

2026-09-11

What is it good for?

It is sold as an "exercise mimetic" — a compound said to produce the effects of endurance training without the training, including fat loss, endurance and mitochondrial health. In animals it activates a family of receptors that switch on genes for burning fat and building mitochondria. Nobody has published what it does in a person.

Illustration: An empty doping test kit with a collection cup and sealed test strip on a white lab bench.
Illustration

What it is

SLU-PP-332 is a synthetic small molecule that switches on the estrogen-related receptors — a family of three nuclear receptors called ERRα, ERRβ and ERRγ. Despite the name, these receptors have nothing to do with estrogen. They are part of the machinery that decides which genes a cell expresses, and the genes they govern include those for burning fat and for building and maintaining mitochondria, the structures inside cells that produce energy.

Activating them, in principle, tells a cell to behave as though it has just been exercising. That is the whole idea behind the phrase attached to this compound everywhere it is sold: an exercise mimetic.

It is not a peptide. There is no amino-acid chain here, no sequence to quote, nothing shared with the compounds that make up most of this library beyond a marketplace. The name is a laboratory code: the chemistry came out of Saint Louis University, and the compound was the 332nd in a numbered series. This library carries it because readers arrive with the name in hand, and the first useful thing to tell them is what class it actually belongs to — the same service the entries on the NNMT inhibitor 5-amino-1MQ and AICAR perform.

What the published record contains

Ten papers. That is the complete literature, and the number is worth sitting with, because it is the smallest published record of any compound in this library that attracts five figures of monthly search interest.

PubMed indexed 10 records for SLU-PP-332 on 2026-09-11. The earliest is from April 2023, in ACS Chemical Biology, describing a synthetic ERR agonist that produced an acute aerobic exercise response and enhanced exercise capacity — in mice. A 2023 paper in the American Journal of Pathology looked at mitochondrial dysfunction in the aging kidney. A January 2024 paper in Circulation examined heart failure through cardiac fatty-acid metabolism. A 2024 paper in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics reported on metabolic syndrome. A 2025 pilot in Frontiers in Physiology addressed age-related muscle atrophy.

Every one of those is preclinical. The running-capacity result that carried this compound into public attention is a rodent result.

The registry is empty

ClinicalTrials.gov held zero registrations naming SLU-PP-332 on 2026-09-11. Not a completed study, not a recruiting one, not a planned one, in any country.

This matters more than it might sound. Several compounds in this library have thin or disappointing human records — the MOTS-c literature mostly measures the body's own peptide rather than administering anything, and GHK-Cu has exactly one indexed randomized trial. Those are weak evidence bases. SLU-PP-332 does not have a weak human evidence base. It has none at all.

Six of the ten PubMed records carry a human tag, and it is worth explaining what that tag means here, because it is the sort of number that gets repeated without being read. Those records are laboratory work using human cells and human liver preparations — including, notably, the metabolite studies. Nobody has been given this compound in a published study.

The detail nobody selling it mentions

Two of the ten papers in the entire literature exist to help anti-doping laboratories catch people taking it.

One is in Drug Testing and Analysis (2026): an analysis and identification of the compound's in-vitro metabolites, written explicitly for doping-control purposes. The other, in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry (2026), characterises the metabolism of both SLU-PP-332 and its successor SLU-PP-915 for the same reason.

So the state of knowledge about this molecule is this: twenty per cent of its published record is about how to detect it in an athlete's sample, and zero per cent is about what it does in a person. The testing world got there first. For anyone competing under anti-doping rules, the practical reading is straightforward — the detection method is published, and it exists specifically because laboratories expect to encounter this compound.

Where it stands

There is no approved product. Searches of DailyMed and Drugs@FDA on 2026-09-11 returned nothing under this name — no drug product, no bulk substance registration, nothing. It is sold as a research chemical.

The research itself has already moved on. SLU-PP-915, described in a 2026 paper as an orally active ERR agonist that enhances aerobic exercise capacity, is the successor from the same programme. That is a normal and healthy sign in drug discovery: a first compound reveals what needs improving, and the chemists improve it. It is also a signal about the first compound's properties. The molecule being sold today is the one the laboratory that made it has moved past.

The two other entries in this library for compounds that are not peptides but are sold as though they were: the NNMT inhibitor 5-amino-1MQ and AICAR, the second of which has the opposite problem — thousands of published papers and more than three thousand people dosed, all of them for something other than what it is sold for. For the peptide compounds most often stacked alongside this one, see MOTS-c and the peptides for longevity overview.

What the research shows

Activates the ERR receptors and changes fat metabolism

Consistent across the published work — but that work is cell culture and mouse studies, ten papers in total

Improves exercise capacity

Demonstrated in mice; the running-capacity results that drove the coverage are rodent results

Has been given to a human being in a published study

No published human administration, and no registration on ClinicalTrials.gov

Is an approved medicine anywhere

No product record at DailyMed or Drugs@FDA

Bars show how much of the evidence is in humans, not how well anything works.

Where it stands

United States

No approved medicine and no product record. Searches of DailyMed and Drugs@FDA on 2026-09-11 returned nothing under this name.

Published record

PubMed indexed 10 records for SLU-PP-332 on 2026-09-11, the earliest from April 2023. Six carry a human tag, and those are laboratory work using human cells or human liver preparations — not people.

Trial registry

Zero registrations on ClinicalTrials.gov (2026-09-11). Not one study, of any phase, in any country listed there.

How it is sold

As a research chemical in capsule and powder form, usually alongside compounds from the same marketing category.

Frequently asked questions

What is SLU-PP-332?

A synthetic small molecule that activates a family of nuclear receptors called the estrogen-related receptors — ERRα, ERRβ and ERRγ. Those receptors govern genes involved in burning fat and building mitochondria, which is why activating them has been described as mimicking endurance exercise. The name is a laboratory code from Saint Louis University, where it was made.

Is SLU-PP-332 a peptide?

No. It is a small synthetic molecule with no amino-acid chain at all. It appears in this library because it is sold and discussed in the same places as research peptides, and because people arriving with the name deserve to be told plainly that it belongs to a different chemical class. The same is true of 5-amino-1MQ and of AICAR.

Has anyone taken it in a study?

Not in any study that has been published or registered. PubMed held 10 records on 2026-09-11 and every one is laboratory or animal work. ClinicalTrials.gov held zero registrations. There is no published safety data in humans, no dose that has been tested in a person, and no record of what it does over any length of time in a body.

What does the animal evidence actually show?

In mice, it increases the expression of genes involved in fat oxidation and mitochondrial function, and animals given it run further before exhaustion. Later animal work extended that to heart failure models and to metabolic syndrome. This is a coherent and interesting preclinical story. It is also the stage at which most compounds fail, and it says nothing about the dose, the safety or the effect in a person.

Why do anti-doping laboratories already have a test for it?

Because detection methods are developed in anticipation, not in response. Two of the ten papers in the entire literature are metabolite-identification studies aimed at doping control, both published in 2026. That tells you something the marketing does not: the sports-testing world expects to find this compound in athletes, and it now knows what to look for. Anyone who competes under anti-doping rules should assume it is detectable.

Is it legal to buy?

It is sold as a research chemical, which is the same position the other unapproved compounds in this library occupy. It is not an approved medicine anywhere, it has no product record at DailyMed or Drugs@FDA, and it has never been through the process that establishes a dose or a safety profile. What is being sold is a preclinical laboratory compound.

Where does SLU-PP-915 fit in?

It is the successor molecule from the same line of work, described in 2026 as an orally active ERR agonist that enhances aerobic exercise capacity. Its existence is a useful signal: the researchers themselves are iterating on the chemistry, which is what happens when a first compound has properties worth improving rather than a finished profile worth testing in people.