The story

Ipamorelin came out of Novo Nordisk in Copenhagen. In 1998 Kirsten Raun and colleagues named it the first selective growth hormone secretagogue: in pigs it released growth hormone as strongly as GHRP-6 but left ACTH and cortisol flat, even at 200 times the dose. Danish work then showed in human volunteers that each dose gives a single growth hormone peak at about 40 minutes and clears in about two hours. Further Danish work showed it grew bone length in young rats and protected bone formation from steroid damage. The ghrelin receptor itself was cloned in 1996, and its natural key, ghrelin, was found in 1999 by Masayasu Kojima and Kenji Kangawa in Japan.