Product Overview
GW501516 Cardarine by Dragon Pharma sits at the centre of this page. The pack is 100 tablets at 20 mg, and the compound is a PPAR-delta agonist, a metabolic modulator that became famous under the nickname cardio in a tablet. It is not a SARM and not a steroid. Nothing in this molecule touches the androgen receptor, nothing aromatises, and the hormonal axis that steroids suppress is left alone.
That clean hormone profile is only half the story, and the other half is the reason this page reads differently from the rest of the range. Development of GW501516 was abandoned in 2007 after cancer appeared rapidly across multiple organs in mice and rats, and WADA has issued separate warnings that the substance is not safe. The dosing figures below are practice, not study results, and they should be read next to that signal.
Cardarine, also catalogued as GW1516, GSK-516 and endurobol, activates the PPAR-delta receptor, one of the nuclear receptors that govern how muscle fibres handle fat as fuel. It surfaced in endurance research because treated animals ran substantially further before exhaustion, and that single result created a black market almost overnight. What the research programme never produced was a human safety dossier, because the carcinogenicity findings in two rodent species ended it.
The pack on this card holds 100 tablets, each carrying 20 mg, from Dragon Pharma. Two short-card rows on this page read Not established, and that is deliberate: the cited sources do not provide a half-life for the compound and do not assign a liver toxicity rating to a PPAR agonist. Those cells are empty because the data is missing, not because nobody filled them in. The one well documented number on the card is detection, and it runs the opposite way from anabolic steroids: sulfone metabolites in urine are reported for up to 40 days after a single dose, while the parent drug itself clears within roughly 5 days.
Mechanism of Action
PPAR-delta is a transcription factor that shifts skeletal muscle toward burning fat and away from storing it. When the receptor is activated, the muscle increases its capacity for fatty acid oxidation and the profile of muscle fibres drifts toward the oxidative end, which is the mechanistic reason the animals in the endurance studies kept going. Glucose handling also improves in the same pathway, which is why metabolic markers and lipid profile come up in the literature.
Two consequences follow from that mechanism. First, none of it involves hormones, so there is no aromatisation, no water retention and no shutdown of testosterone production; a SERM recovery protocol has nothing to recover. Second, the same receptor pathway is the site of the cancer signal. In the rodent studies that ended the programme, animals given about 3 mg per kilogram per day developed tumours in several organs within a short period, and there is no human dataset that tells you where the safe boundary sits. Receptor-level reasoning cannot make that risk disappear, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Dosage Protocol
The tablet is taken once a day. The figures below are the ones that circulate, and they are tagged as practice because no human protocol survived the closure of the development programme.
| Starting dose | 10 mg a day, once daily |
| Common range | 10-20 mg a day |
| Upper range | 20 mg a day; anything above sits outside the available data |
| Block length | 8 weeks for a first block, up to 12 in practice |
| Administration | Oral tablet, 20 mg strength, supply of 100 per pack |
| Female use | Sources describe no female protocol for cardarine |
Because the hormonal axis is untouched, the usual recovery logic does not apply and cycling off is about limiting exposure rather than restarting anything. That is the reason a shorter block is the sensible default here: the unknown in this molecule is dose and duration dependent, and every extra week adds exposure without adding evidence.
Suggested Protocols
Cardarine is combined in practice with compounds that work on unrelated pathways, which keeps the logic simple even though none of the combinations is supported by trial data.
What to Expect
Reports on this compound cluster around endurance and conditioning rather than size, and the timelines come from non-medical use.
The practical expectation for a person reading this card is modest performance change paired with a genuine and unresolved safety signal. Anyone unwilling to accept the second should not be considering the first.
Side Effects and Management
The user-reported list is short and mild. The animal findings are neither mild nor short, and they are the reason this section leads with them.
No drug interactions are described in the sources, which is a statement about the absence of study rather than an assurance of safety. WADA issued explicit warnings about this compound, and anyone competing in a tested sport should assume the 40 day urinary window applies to them.
Store the pack in its original blister, at room temperature, out of direct sunlight and away from damp. The tablets are small and easy to lose, so keep them in the carton with the lot number rather than decanting them, and keep them somewhere children and pets cannot reach.
Because this is a research material with an unresolved safety profile, a tidy record matters more than usual: note the date the pack was opened and the date the block started, and dispose of any tablet that has discoloured or broken rather than using it.
Post-Cycle Therapy
There is no hormonal restart to plan, because this compound does not suppress the axis. What the end of a block needs is a health check rather than a protocol.
If a SARM was part of the same block, that compound sets the recovery rules, and a Nolvadex or Clomid protocol belongs to it rather than to the cardarine.
This listing states the strength, the tablet count and the manufacturer exactly as they ship, and it reports the 2007 rodent cancer findings and the WADA position instead of burying them, which is the least a research card should do. Orders go out discreetly, both international and US domestic pricing is shown on the product page before checkout, and every item is sold as a reference material rather than as a medicine. If cardarine is not the right fit, the rest of the Dragon Pharma line covers SARMs, peptides and recovery compounds, and our support team can confirm exactly what a listing contains before you order.
