Sunifiram (DM-235)

Sunifiram, also called DM-235, is a piperazine that came out of an academic medicinal chemistry program at the University of Florence, not out of a pharmaceutical company. It was first reported in 2000 as one of a series of acylpiperazines obtained by simplifying a bicyclic scaffold, and it stood out for potency: it prevented amnesia in the mouse passive avoidance test at doses about a thousand times lower than piracetam-like reference compounds (PMID: 11087574; PMID: 12070754). Despite the racetam-style name it is not a pyrrolidinone and is not structurally a racetam.

The mechanism is not fully resolved. Binding studies found no affinity for the major central receptors or channels, yet sunifiram prevented amnesia induced by drugs acting on several different transmitter systems, including scopolamine, mecamylamine, baclofen and clonidine (PMID: 12070754; PMID: 16834757). Two glutamatergic actions have been documented. Sunifiram and its analog unifiram reversed amnesia induced by the AMPA receptor antagonist NBQX in mice and reversed kynurenic acid blockade of NMDA-mediated noradrenaline release in rat hippocampal slices, an effect abolished by NBQX (PMID: 14600801). Separately, in mouse hippocampal slices sunifiram enhanced long-term potentiation with a bell-shaped concentration-response curve peaking at 10 nanomolar; the enhancement was blocked by an antagonist of the glycine site of the NMDA receptor but not by an antagonist of the polyamine site, and involved protein kinase C alpha, Src family kinase and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (PMID: 23733502). Sunifiram also increased acetylcholine release in rat brain (PMID: 11087574).

In disease-model animals, sunifiram improved spatial reference memory in the Y maze and short-term memory in novel object recognition in olfactory bulbectomized mice and restored hippocampal long-term potentiation, with those effects blocked by a glycine site inhibitor; it did not improve depressive behavior in the same animals (PMID: 23295391).

There is no human data of any kind. No clinical trial, case series or pharmacokinetic study has been published, and searches of ClinicalTrials.gov return no records. The chemist who led the group that discovered sunifiram and unifiram wrote in 2015 that he had discovered by chance that dozens of websites were selling both compounds as cognitive enhancers for healthy people, even though only a few preclinical studies had been performed and their long-term toxicity was unknown, and that neither compound had been protected by a patent or taken forward by industry (PMID: 25831025).

Sunifiram is not approved in any country, is not a controlled substance in the United States and has no established human dose, safety threshold or contraindication list. Everything sold is a research chemical. One frequently cited paper on sunifiram carbamate hybrids as dual acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and NMDA co-agonists was retracted by the journal in 2026 (PMID: 42565552), so any claim traced back to it should be treated as unsupported.

Sunifiram (DM-235) is available in capsule, nasal forms.

Compare prices, payment methods, shipping, and COA scores across 1 vendor.

1 of the vendors BodyHackGuide tracks list Sunifiram (DM-235) (2 listings). Among BodyHackGuide's Sunifiram (DM-235) listings recorded as in stock with a milligram count, the lowest price per milligram is $0.100/mg at Disguised Alpha and the median is $0.100/mg. The Sunifiram (DM-235) prices on BodyHackGuide are vendors' listed prices as BodyHackGuide last recorded them, not transactions; the most recent recorded change to a Sunifiram (DM-235) listing is dated 7 September 2026.

BodyHackGuide holds no third-party certificate records for Sunifiram (DM-235). Each vendor page on BodyHackGuide shows how many certificate records BodyHackGuide holds for that vendor.