Who discovered growth hormone? Herbert Evans and Joseph Long showed its growth-promoting action in rats in 1921. Choh Hao Li and Harold Papkoff later separated out human growth hormone (HGH), publishing their work in 1956. Maurice Raben brought human hormone treatment to patients and published a landmark report in 1958.
Those were different achievements. Finding a growth signal, identifying the human molecule and treating someone with it took decades of work by different people.
Who discovered growth hormone in the early experiments?
The problem began with the pituitary, a small gland beneath the brain. Doctors had linked disorders of that gland to unusual growth. Researchers wanted to identify the substance responsible.
Evans headed the anatomy department, which studied body structure, at UC Berkeley. Working with Long, he found that extracts from cattle pituitary glands made rats grow. A history review in Acta Paediatrica describes their 1921 experiments.
An extract was still a mixture. Separating the growth hormone from everything else in the gland became the next task. Berkeley's own history credits Evans and Li with purifying cattle growth hormone in 1944.
Choh Hao Li and the human hormone
Li was a chemist in Evans's Berkeley laboratory and later directed the university's Hormone Research Laboratory. UCSF's archive records those roles.
His work with Harold Papkoff produced the 1956 Science paper on human and monkey pituitary growth hormone. Human hormone mattered because cattle growth hormone did not work as a treatment in people. A substance that made a rat grow could not simply become a child's medicine.
That is why the answer changes with the question: Evans and Long demonstrated the early growth effect; Li and Papkoff isolated the human hormone.
The distinction still matters. Sermorelin copies part of GHRH, growth hormone-releasing hormone, the brain's signal asking the pituitary to release growth hormone. The sermorelin versus HGH comparison explains how that differs from supplying the hormone itself.
Raben's growth hormone treatment report, in 1958
At Tufts in Boston, Maurice Raben developed his own way of extracting growth hormone from human pituitary glands, published in Science in 1957, and took that hormone into clinical care. His 1958 paper in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism was titled “Treatment of a pituitary dwarf with human growth hormone.” In current language, it described treatment for growth hormone deficiency: the body was not making enough hormone.
The publication date and treatment's beginning are different. A 2020 clinical follow-up dates Raben's introduction of human pituitary extracts to 1956. John C. Beck and colleagues at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital published the first reported use of Raben's preparations in a person, an early human experiment in Science in 1957.
Recognition for making the hormones identifiable
Li received the 1962 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for identifying and isolating six pituitary hormones. Growth hormone was one part of that broader work.
When was synthetic HGH made?
There are several dates because “synthetic” covers different ways of making the hormone.
Li and Donald Yamashiro published a laboratory synthesis report in 1970. Hugh Niall published a revised structure in 1971. Structure here means the order of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The 1970 paper's own title calls its product “a protein possessing growth-promoting and lactogenic activities”; Niall's 1971 paper then revised the amino-acid order of human growth hormone.
In 1979, David Goeddel and colleagues at Genentech and City of Hope reported making human growth hormone in bacteria. They used recombinant DNA, genetic instructions pieced together in the laboratory. That opened a different production route from extracting hormone from donated glands.
Why the old pituitary hormone program stopped
For years, doctors relied on hormone extracted from deceased donors' pituitary glands. The supply was limited and depended on collecting human tissue.
In 1985, cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, changed that system. CJD is a fatal brain disease caused by infectious misfolded proteins called prions. Koch and colleagues' 1985 NEJM case report described a possible link with cadaver-derived hormone.
NIH records explain that U.S. distribution stopped in 1985 after the cases emerged. Modern recombinant growth hormone is not made from human glands and does not carry that CJD contamination risk.
FDA's Protropin record gives October 17, 1985, as the marketing approval date for somatrem, a manufactured form of human growth hormone.
As of October 29, 2026, the day this article was written, NIH's September 23 meeting summary reports 36 confirmed CJD cases among recipients in its former pituitary-hormone program. No new cases had been confirmed since the committee's 2024 meeting; the minutes also note that surveillance of the cohort ended in late 2025. That count concerns the old donor-derived treatment.
What the discovery did not settle about aging
Treating a hormone deficiency did not establish that giving extra hormone to otherwise healthy adults extends life. The Rudman study guide follows the later anti-aging claims. A 2007 review in Annals of Internal Medicine of trials in healthy older adults (average age 69) found limited evidence, small body-composition changes and higher rates of side effects such as swelling, joint pain and carpal tunnel syndrome; it concluded that growth hormone cannot be recommended as an anti-aging therapy.
Later releasing peptides raised a different question. CJC-1295 and ipamorelin prompt the body to release its own growth hormone through different cellular receivers. A 2006 CJC-1295 trial measured hormone levels. It did not test longer life or the CJC-1295/ipamorelin combination.
Where modern growth hormone medicines fit
Human growth hormone also has its own federal distribution rules under 21 U.S.C. § 333(e); the peptide law guide explains them.
Geref's sermorelin treatment product was approved in 1997 and its approval withdrawn in 2009, as FDA's 2013 notice records. Compounded sermorelin is different from the FDA-approved product once marketed and since discontinued: the formulation offered here is not FDA-approved. Compounded CJC-1295/ipamorelin is also not FDA-approved.
As of October 29, 2026, the day this article was written, CJC-1295 and ipamorelin are not among the six peptides in Appendix A of HHS's draft policy. The HHS policy guide explains its conditions.
Tesamorelin also signals growth hormone release. Branded Egrifta has a narrow use: reducing excess abdominal fat in adults with HIV, an infection that weakens immune defenses, and abnormal fat distribution. The Egrifta WR prescribing information, revised March 2025, states that it is not indicated for weight-loss management. Compounded tesamorelin is different from that FDA-approved product and is not FDA-approved.
What a prescription visit adds
A licensed provider may still prescribe — that decision is between you and your doctor.
At Promise, a licensed provider reviews every request, and not everyone qualifies. When prescribed, compounded medication is prepared and dispensed by a licensed U.S. compounding pharmacy. The historical discovery explains the biology; the visit addresses whether a particular medication fits a particular person.
