Adamax vs Dihexa

Dihexa

Dihexa is a small-molecule analogue of angiotensin IV, studied in animal and cell models of cognition, hair-cell damage and nerve repair. Its published structure is not a simple peptide chain but a two-residue core carrying a hexanoyl group at one end and an aminohexanoic amide at the other. Much of the founding work came from a single laboratory, and two of those papers now carry a retraction and an expression of concern. Later studies by other groups used zebrafish, rats and mice, and one of them reported no protective effect in its model.

How Dihexa acts

Published work describes dihexa as acting on the hepatocyte growth factor system rather than on an angiotensin receptor. In zebrafish lateral line hair cells, protection against aminoglycoside damage was attenuated by an HGF antagonist and by inhibitors of Akt, TOR and MEK, which the authors read as evidence that c-Met signalling is involved. A 2021 study in APP/PS1 mice attributed its effects to the PI3K and AKT pathway. The 2014 paper that first proposed direct HGF binding has since been retracted, so this account rests on the later work.

The records side by side

• Type: Adamax, not recorded; Dihexa, Peptidomimetic
• Molecular weight: Adamax, not recorded; Dihexa, 504.7 g/mol
• Molecular formula: Adamax, not recorded; Dihexa, C27H44N4O5

Reading a comparison

A comparison places two records side by side; it does not merge them. Each description above is drawn from that compound's own record, and the two were not necessarily characterised by the same methods, at the same time, or to the same level of detail. Before comparing any attribute, it is worth establishing that both records describe the substance you think they describe — names are not identifiers, and two entries sharing a name can differ in salt form, stereochemistry or the convention used to state a mass. Where a figure carries no method beside it, the comparison is between two reported numbers rather than between two measurements.