SR9009 (Stenabolic)

Detailed overview

SR9009 (Stenabolic) is a synthetic compound described by Thomas Burris's laboratory at Scripps Research as an agonist of the REV-ERB nuclear receptor. Its reputation comes from the 2012 Nature paper by Solt and colleagues: in mice the compound raised metabolic rate, reduced fat mass and altered circadian behaviour. That is where the "exercise in a bottle" slogan comes from. Two things are missing from this story, and both are decisive. First, the mechanism does not hold. The 2019 PNAS paper by Dierickx and colleagues showed that SR9009 affects proliferation and metabolism even in cells genetically lacking both REV-ERB-alpha and REV-ERB-beta. If the effect appears without REV-ERB, then REV-ERB is not mediating it. The mechanism advertised in shops is therefore incomplete at best and wrong at worst, and the compound's real targets are unknown. Second, there is no human data. SR9009 has never been tested in a clinical trial. This is not a case of sparse data: it is zero. On top of that, rodent pharmacokinetics indicate very poor oral bioavailability and a short half-life, so most of an oral dose never reaches the circulation. In practice this means a user knows neither how much drug was absorbed nor what the absorbed fraction is doing. It is on this site because it is sold and searched for. The scientific claims used to sell it, however, do not stand up.