Pinealon is the synthetic tripeptide L-glutamyl-L-aspartyl-L-arginine (Glu-Asp-Arg, EDR), one of the short regulatory peptides studied by Khavinson and colleagues in St Petersburg. The published literature is small and comes almost entirely from that group and its collaborators. It consists of cell culture work (cerebellar granule cells, neutrophils, PC12 cells, ageing cortical cell cultures, HeLa cells and induced neurons), a rat model of prenatal hyperhomocysteinaemia, and biophysical studies of peptide and DNA interaction. Independent replication is limited, and the group's review should be read alongside the primary studies.