Compare · Mitochondrial peptide
MOTS-c vs SS-31
Both are mitochondrial peptide compounds. Here's how they line up on the evidence — graded the same way.
| MOTS-c | SS-31 | |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence | Animal only | Preliminary human |
| Class | Mitochondrial peptide | Mitochondrial peptide |
| Summary | MOTS-c is a mitochondrial peptide with strong rodent metabolic data but no completed, published human efficacy trial. It's unapproved and WADA-banned. | Elamipretide won a narrow FDA accelerated approval for Barth syndrome in 2025, but its largest trials in myopathy, heart failure, and dry AMD all missed. |
| Full profile → | Full profile → |
MOTS-c
MOTS-c is one of the most-hyped "exercise in a vial" peptides, and the underlying biology is genuinely interesting. But the human evidence that it does anything useful is, as of mid-2026, essentially absent.
SS-31
SS-31, now approved as the drug elamipretide, is one of the more instructive case studies on this site. It is not a gray-market unknown invented by supplement marketers — it is a real molecule that went through real, rigorous clinical trials. The honest lesson is what those trials showed: across…