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Updated September 2026. Cardarine is sold by SARMs Store strictly as a research compound. Nothing on this page is medical advice or an instruction for human use.
Cardarine, catalogued as GW-501516 and sometimes GW1516 or Endurobol, is sold alongside SARMs but is not one. It is a PPAR-delta agonist, a class of compound developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Ligand Pharmaceuticals in the late 1990s for metabolic and cardiovascular disease. It has a genuinely interesting research record, a famous animal study, a well-known reason its development was abandoned, and a great deal of misinformation in both directions. This guide sets out what is known.
What Cardarine is
GW-501516 is a selective agonist of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta (PPAR-δ), a nuclear receptor that regulates genes involved in fatty acid oxidation, mitochondrial function and muscle fibre type. Activating PPAR-δ shifts skeletal muscle towards burning fat for fuel and increases the proportion of oxidative, slow-twitch fibres in animal models. It has no activity at the androgen receptor, does not affect testosterone, and is not anabolic in the way SARMs are. Its half-life in humans is roughly 24 hours.
What the research found
Human lipid studies. GSK ran several phase I and II trials between 2000 and 2007. In healthy volunteers and in people with low HDL, doses of 2.5 to 10 mg daily for two weeks raised HDL cholesterol by up to around 17 per cent and lowered triglycerides, VLDL and apoB (Sprecher and colleagues, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, 2007). A 12-week study in men with metabolic syndrome at 5 and 10 mg daily produced similar lipid changes and a reduction in liver fat. These are the only human data.
The "exercise in a pill" study (animal). Narkar and colleagues at the Salk Institute (Cell, 2008) gave GW-501516 to mice. On its own it changed gene expression in muscle but did not improve running endurance in untrained animals; combined with four weeks of treadmill training it increased running time by about 68 per cent over training alone. A second compound, AICAR, improved endurance without training. The press collapsed the two findings together, which is why Cardarine is still described as an endurance drug. The human endurance effect has never been measured.
Why development stopped. In 2007 GSK discontinued the programme after two-year rodent carcinogenicity studies found tumours in multiple organs (liver, bladder, stomach, skin, thyroid and others) in rats and mice given the compound at doses from about 3 mg/kg upwards for the whole period. The doses were many times the human trial doses on a body-weight basis, and the studies were in rodents over their lifetimes, but a positive multi-organ carcinogenicity result ends drug development, and it ended this one. No human data on cancer risk exist because no human has been dosed long enough under observation to produce any.
Doses used in the research
For reference only: the human trials used 2.5 to 10 mg daily for two to twelve weeks. The rodent carcinogenicity studies used 3 mg/kg per day and above for two years. Products sold as research compounds are typically 10 mg per capsule. SARMs Store does not sell Cardarine for human consumption.
Παρενέργειες που αναφέρθηκαν
In the short human trials the compound was well tolerated with no significant adverse events reported at up to 10 mg daily, and no effect on testosterone or liver enzymes. The safety concern is entirely the long-term rodent cancer finding described above, which is unresolved and unresolvable without data that will never be collected. Anyone reading about Cardarine should hold both facts at once: clean short-term human tolerability, and an animal carcinogenicity signal that stopped a major pharmaceutical company.
Cardarine compared with SARMs and Stenabolic
Cardarine is often stacked with Ostarine or SR-9009 in forum discussion because it does not act on the androgen receptor, so it is assumed not to add to testosterone suppression. That assumption is consistent with the pharmacology. Stenabolic (SR-9009) is a REV-ERB agonist with a related metabolic rationale but very poor oral bioavailability in the animal studies, so the two are not interchangeable in research terms.
Νομικό καθεστώς στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, 2026
Cardarine is not a controlled substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. As with SARMs, selling or advertising it for human use makes it an unlicensed medicine and the MHRA has enforced on that basis, so it is sold in the UK strictly for research. It is on the WADA Prohibited List under S4.4 (metabolic modulators, PPAR-δ agonists) and is prohibited at all times; WADA issued a specific warning about it in 2013 citing the carcinogenicity data. It is one of the more frequently detected non-steroidal substances in anti-doping.
Πώς να ελέγξετε έναν προμηθευτή
Cardarine is one of the compounds most often found to be under-dosed or substituted in third-party testing of retail products. Insist on a batch-specific certificate of analysis showing HPLC or LC-MS identity and a purity figure, and check the batch number against the bottle. Dexters Labs Cardarine GW-501516 is made in the UK at 10 mg per capsule, 90 capsules, and each batch is independently tested; the certificate is linked from the product page.
Συχνές ερωτήσεις
Είναι η Καρδαρίνη SARM; No. It is a PPAR-delta agonist. It does not act on the androgen receptor and does not affect testosterone.
Does Cardarine cause cancer? In rats and mice given high doses for two years it caused tumours in multiple organs, which is why GSK stopped development in 2007. There are no human data either way.
Does Cardarine improve endurance? In trained mice, yes, by a large margin. In humans it has never been tested for endurance.
Does Cardarine burn fat? Human studies showed improved blood lipids and reduced liver fat over 12 weeks; they did not measure body-fat loss as an outcome.
Is Cardarine legal in the UK in 2026? Legal to buy and possess as a research compound, illegal to sell or advertise for human consumption, banned in sport.
How long is Cardarine detectable? Metabolites have been reported in urine for up to 40 days after a single dose in anti-doping research.
Σχετική ανάγνωση
- Ostarine (MK-2866): the complete research guide
- Stenabolic (SR-9009): what the research shows
- Are SARMs legal in the UK? 2026 update
- Third-party testing: how to read a certificate of analysis
Ερευνητικό προϊόν: Dexters Labs Cardarine GW-501516 10 mg, 90 capsules
Sources: Sprecher DL et al., Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 2007;27:359-365. Olson EJ et al., Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 2012;32:2289-2294. Narkar VA et al., Cell 2008;134:405-415. GSK/Ligand discontinuation notice 2007; Geiger LE et al., Toxicologist 2009 (rat and mouse carcinogenicity abstracts). WADA Prohibited List 2026 and WADA statement on GW501516, March 2013.