MOTS-c Reconstitution: Water per Vial, mg/mL and Units

How 5 mg and 10 mg MOTS-c vials convert to mg/mL and U-100 units at 0.5 to 3 mL of water, for the milligram amounts protocol and clinic pages state.

Medibact Guides · Published 2026-09-18

Illustration: Two clear glass vials, one partially filled with water, on a white lab bench. — Illustration

MOTS-c is a 16-amino-acid peptide encoded inside mitochondrial DNA, in the 12S ribosomal RNA region, first described by Lee and colleagues in Cell Metabolism in 2015. On the research market it is sold as a lyophilized powder in 5 mg and 10 mg vials, the two sizes the MOTS-c calculator on this site is built around. This page reports the water volumes the sources state for those vials, the concentration each volume produces, and what the milligram amounts those sources quote come to on a U-100 insulin syringe. It reports; it does not recommend. The figures themselves, and where each one comes from, are on the MOTS-c dosage page; the index of every compound's arithmetic is the reconstitution hub.

What the sources state

MOTS-c is unusual among research peptides in one respect that matters for the arithmetic: the amounts in circulation are milligrams, not micrograms. That decides everything below.

Source	What it states	Kind of source	Opened
DailyMed search, "MOTS-c"	Zero labels	Regulator database	2026-09-18
ClinicalTrials.gov, MOTS-c as intervention	5 records; one administers it: NCT07505745, Phase 2, 120 planned, subcutaneous, "fixed dose once daily for 12 weeks", amount not stated, recruiting, no results	Trial registry	2026-09-18
NCT03998514 (CB4211, a MOTS-c analogue, CohBar)	Phase 1a/1b, 88 participants, subcutaneous, dose levels named only "Dose 1" to "Dose 6", completed, no results posted	Trial registry	2026-09-18
Peptide Dosing Protocols, MOTS-c guide	10 mg vial in 1.0 mL, 10 mg/mL; "a 5 mg dose is 0.5 mL, which is 50 units"; 5 mg two to three times a week for four to eight weeks, a 10 mg tier; "None of them have been validated in a published human randomized trial"	Protocol site, last reviewed August 2026	2026-09-18
Perfect B clinic page	10 mg vial in 0.5 mL, 20 mg/mL; "5 mg equals 25 units (0.25 mL)"; once every five days, four injections in a 20-day cycle	Clinic page, updated 2026-08-19	2026-09-18
Lee et al., Cell Metabolism 2015; Reynolds et al., Nature Communications 2021	MOTS-c treatment in mice; intermittent treatment three times a week in mice; no human dose	Peer-reviewed animal studies	2026-09-18

Two things follow from that table. The vial sizes and water volumes in circulation are conventions, because there is no label to set them. And the one registered study that gives MOTS-c to people does not state its dose, so the 5 mg figure cannot be checked against a trial.

Bacteriostatic Water

USP-grade, 0.9% benzyl alcohol, 30 mL multi-dose vial. Research use only.

$30.99

Buy at Medibact

Water per vial and the concentration it gives

The calculator works every compound at 1, 2 and 3 mL, and the sources above add 0.5 mL for the 10 mg vial. Concentration is the vial amount divided by the water volume; the micrograms in one unit follow from the U-100 scale, on which 100 units is 1 mL (MedlinePlus, "Giving an insulin injection", reviewed 2024-07-21).

Vial	Water added	Concentration	Micrograms per unit
5 mg	1 mL	5 mg/mL	50 mcg
5 mg	2 mL	2.5 mg/mL	25 mcg
5 mg	3 mL	1.67 mg/mL	16.7 mcg
10 mg	0.5 mL	20 mg/mL	200 mcg
10 mg	1 mL	10 mg/mL	100 mcg
10 mg	2 mL	5 mg/mL	50 mcg
10 mg	3 mL	3.33 mg/mL	33.3 mcg

The 0.5 mL row is the clinic page's configuration and the 1 mL row is the protocol page's. Neither source explains why it chose its volume; the arithmetic below shows what the choice does.

The 5 mg and 10 mg amounts in syringe units

These are the two amounts the sources quote, converted at each concentration. A U-100 insulin syringe holds 100 units, so any figure above 100 exceeds one barrel.

Concentration	5 mg	10 mg
20 mg/mL (10 mg in 0.5 mL)	25 units (0.25 mL)	50 units (0.5 mL)
10 mg/mL (10 mg in 1 mL)	50 units (0.5 mL)	100 units (1 mL)
5 mg/mL (10 mg in 2 mL, or 5 mg in 1 mL)	100 units (1 mL)	200 units, two barrels
3.33 mg/mL (10 mg in 3 mL)	150 units, more than one barrel	300 units
2.5 mg/mL (5 mg in 2 mL)	200 units, two barrels	not available from a 5 mg vial
1.67 mg/mL (5 mg in 3 mL)	300 units	not available from a 5 mg vial

The pattern is the opposite of what a microgram-scale peptide shows. With sermorelin or ipamorelin, more water makes a small draw easier to read. With MOTS-c, more water pushes an ordinary draw past the capacity of the syringe, which is why the two sources that state a volume both chose 1 mL or less for a 10 mg vial.

Why the vial count does not change with the water

A 5 mg vial contains one 5 mg amount. A 10 mg vial contains two, or one 10 mg amount. That is true at 0.5 mL and at 3 mL; the water sets the volume of each draw and nothing else. The pages that describe 5 mg two or three times a week are therefore describing a 10 mg vial every three to five days, and a 5 mg vial per injection, which is the practical consequence the arithmetic makes visible and the sources leave implicit.

There is also no established basis for the 5 mg figure to convert from. The mouse studies used treatment schedules in animals (three times a week in the 2021 paper), the human literature measures the body's own MOTS-c rather than administering it, and the analogue trial that did inject people names its doses only as levels. A weight-based conversion from mice to a 5 mg human figure would need a published scaling the sources do not provide.

The mixing steps, as labels describe them

MOTS-c has no label, so the description below is the labelled procedure for a lyophilized peptide supplied with bacteriostatic water, taken from the EGRIFTA WR (tesamorelin) label revised in March 2025: the lyophilized powder is reconstituted with the stated volume of the supplied Bacteriostatic Water for Injection; the vial is moved in a circle to mix the powder and liquid, and is not shaken; the solution is inspected for particles and discoloration, and is used only if clear and colourless. The same label's own concentration note is a useful caution for anyone doing the arithmetic by hand: its 11.6 mg vial in 1.3 mL of diluent is stated as 8 mg/mL, not 8.9 mg/mL, because the dissolved powder adds to the final volume. The calculator on this site, like every calculator, treats the water volume as the final volume, which is a close approximation at the volumes above and an exact one nowhere. The general procedure in full is on Medibact's how to reconstitute peptides page and is not repeated here.

Storage after mixing

No product label exists for MOTS-c, so there is no label statement to report on the solution's storage; what labels and manufacturers say about reconstituted peptides is on Medibact's how to store peptides page.

What this page does not do

It does not state or suggest an amount of MOTS-c to use, a frequency or a duration. The 5 mg and 10 mg figures above are reported because protocol and clinic pages state them; the page that publishes the tiers says itself that none has been validated in a human randomized trial, and the registry confirms there is no completed trial to validate them. The reconstitution arithmetic is exact for the inputs given and says nothing about whether any input is appropriate. Medibact's MOTS-c guide covers the compound itself; Peptifact's MOTS-c dosage page examines the sponsor behind the one registered trial. Decisions about administering anything to a person belong with a clinician.

Sources and dates

Opened 2026-09-18: the DailyMed SPL search API for "MOTS-c" (zero records); the ClinicalTrials.gov v2 API for MOTS-c as an intervention (five records) and the study records NCT07505745 and NCT03998514; PubMed through the NCBI E-utilities ("MOTS-c"[tiab], 256 records; with humans[mh], 145) and the abstracts of PMID 25738459 (Lee et al. 2015) and PMID 33473109 (Reynolds et al. 2021); the Peptide Dosing Protocols MOTS-c guide (last reviewed August 2026); the Perfect B MOTS-c protocol page (updated 2026-08-19); the EGRIFTA WR prescribing information (revised 3/2025, section 2.2 and section 11); MedlinePlus, "Giving an insulin injection" (reviewed 2024-07-21). Corrections go to the contact page.

Bacteriostatic Water

USP-grade, 0.9% benzyl alcohol, 30 mL multi-dose vial. Research use only.

$30.99

Buy at Medibact

Medibact Guides facts

MOTS-c has no approved product anywhere: a DailyMed search for MOTS-c on 2026-09-18 returned zero labels, so no label states a diluent volume, a concentration or a dose for it.
ClinicalTrials.gov held five records naming MOTS-c as an intervention on 2026-09-18. Only NCT07505745 (Phase 2, 120 planned participants, subcutaneous, 'fixed dose once daily for 12 weeks', recruiting, sponsor Hudson Biotech) administers it, and the record does not state the dose.
The only completed injection study of a MOTS-c-derived compound is CohBar's Phase 1a/1b trial of the analogue CB4211 (NCT03998514, 88 participants, subcutaneous, completed, no results posted as of 2026-09-18); the registry lists its dose levels only as 'Dose 1' to 'Dose 6'.
The figure protocol pages state is 5 mg per subcutaneous injection, two to three times a week for four to eight weeks, with a 10 mg tier; the page publishing it states that none of the tiers has been validated in a published human randomized trial (Peptide Dosing Protocols, last reviewed August 2026, opened 2026-09-18).
A clinic page opened on 2026-09-18 (Perfect B, updated 2026-08-19) describes a 10 mg vial in 0.5 mL of bacteriostatic water, 20 mg/mL, so that 5 mg is 0.25 mL or 25 units, given once every five days for four injections.
At the calculator's water volumes a 10 mg vial gives 10 mg/mL in 1 mL, 5 mg/mL in 2 mL and 3.33 mg/mL in 3 mL, which puts a 5 mg amount at 50, 100 and 150 units on a U-100 syringe. Only the first two fit one 1 mL barrel.
A 5 mg vial holds exactly one 5 mg amount whatever volume of water is added, and a 10 mg vial holds two. The water volume changes the draw volume, not the number of amounts in the vial.
The animal work behind the compound is Lee et al. (Cell Metabolism, 2015), which reports MOTS-c treatment in mice, and Reynolds et al. (Nature Communications, 2021), which reports intermittent treatment three times a week in mice and notes that exercise raises the body's own MOTS-c in people; neither states a human dose, and two authors of the 2021 paper are disclosed consultants and shareholders of CohBar.
PubMed held 256 MOTS-c records on 2026-09-18, 145 of them tagged for humans, while the trial registry holds no completed study that administered MOTS-c itself, so there is no human dosing figure to check the protocol figures against.

Frequently asked questions

How much water goes into a 10 mg vial of MOTS-c?

No label exists, so the answer comes from convention rather than a regulator. The protocol page opened on 2026-09-18 works its example with 1 mL of bacteriostatic water, which gives 10 mg/mL; a clinic page uses 0.5 mL, which gives 20 mg/mL; the calculator's standard columns add 2 mL (5 mg/mL) and 3 mL (3.33 mg/mL). Each of those is arithmetic on the same 10 mg. What changes between them is how many syringe units a given amount occupies, not how much peptide the vial contains.

How many units is 5 mg of MOTS-c on an insulin syringe?

It depends entirely on the concentration. At 20 mg/mL (a 10 mg vial in 0.5 mL) 5 mg is 25 units. At 10 mg/mL (10 mg in 1 mL) it is 50 units. At 5 mg/mL (10 mg in 2 mL, or 5 mg in 1 mL) it is 100 units, the full barrel of a 1 mL U-100 syringe. At 3.33 mg/mL or lower it is 150 units or more and no longer fits one syringe. The unit figure is meaningless without the mL of water that produced it.

How is MOTS-c reconstituted?

The same way labels describe mixing any lyophilized peptide, since MOTS-c has no label of its own. The EGRIFTA WR label (a lyophilized peptide supplied with bacteriostatic water, revised March 2025) directs the diluent into the vial, has the vial moved in a circle to mix rather than shaken, and has the solution inspected and used only if clear and free of particles. Medibact's step-by-step reconstitution article carries the general procedure; this page only carries the compound's arithmetic.

How many 5 mg amounts are in a MOTS-c vial?

One in a 5 mg vial and two in a 10 mg vial, regardless of the water volume. This is the point most often misread on MOTS-c pages: adding more water lowers the concentration and enlarges each draw, but it cannot create a third 5 mg amount from 10 mg of powder. At the 10 mg tier the protocol page also lists, a 10 mg vial is a single amount.

Is there a labelled or trial dose for MOTS-c?

No. There is no approved label in any jurisdiction (DailyMed, 2026-09-18: zero records). The one registered study that gives MOTS-c to people, NCT07505745, describes a fixed once-daily subcutaneous dose for 12 weeks without stating the amount, and had posted no results on 2026-09-18. The completed CB4211 study administered an analogue, not MOTS-c, at dose levels the registry names only as Dose 1 to Dose 6.

What does the MOTS-c calculator on this site do?

It takes the vial amount, the water volume and an amount entered by the reader, and returns the concentration in mg/mL, the micrograms in one U-100 unit, and the units and millilitres that amount occupies. It does not suggest an amount, and every figure it returns changes when the water volume changes. The formula it uses is shown beside the result so that it can be checked by hand.