Selank is a synthetic heptapeptide derived from the immune peptide tuftsin, studied in Russian research as an anxiolytic without sedation or dependence; this page collects reported examples for educational use only, not medical advice.
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Selank Guide: Available Now
Educational use only — not medical advice. This guide summarizes information reported in published research and community practice for educational purposes. It is not medical advice and not a recommendation to use any compound. Any doses, schedules, or combinations shown are examples of what has been reported, not instructions for you. Many peptides described here are research compounds that are not FDA-approved for the uses discussed and may be investigational or restricted. Effects, risks, and legal status vary; individual needs and results vary. Consult a qualified, licensed healthcare professional before making any decision. Do not use this content to diagnose, treat, or dose yourself.
Selank at a glance
What it is
Selank, the synthetic heptapeptide Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg-Pro-Gly-Pro - a stabilized analog of the immune peptide tuftsin
Researched for
Anxiety, stress adaptation and cognitive research contexts
Plasma half-life
No primary pharmacokinetic study establishing a plasma half-life for Selank was located in any species; the figures in circulation trace back to leu-enkephalin's half-life, which Selank lengthens. Reported effects outlast any plausible plasma exposure
Regulatory status
Not FDA-approved. Registered as a medicine in Russia; research use only elsewhere
Educational reference. This page does not publish dose ranges or reconstitution arithmetic.
What it is / mechanism
Selank is a synthetic analog of tuftsin, a naturally occurring immunomodulatory tetrapeptide fragment of immunoglobulin G, extended with a Pro-Gly-Pro tail that substantially increases its stability against enzymatic degradation. Published research describes several proposed mechanisms rather than a single receptor target. It is reported to modulate the expression and metabolism of monoamines, particularly serotonin, and to influence GABAergic signaling indirectly - which is the proposed basis for anxiolytic effects without the sedation, motor impairment or dependence associated with benzodiazepines. It has also been reported to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression, to affect enkephalin degradation by inhibiting enkephalin-degrading enzymes, and to retain some of tuftsin's immunomodulatory activity including effects on cytokine balance. The absence of a single well-characterized receptor is a genuine gap in the mechanistic picture.
Researched effects
In Russian clinical and preclinical research Selank has been associated with reduced anxiety, improved stress adaptation, and modest effects on attention and memory, generally described as occurring without sedation, cognitive dulling, withdrawal or dependence - the contrast with benzodiazepines is the recurring theme in this literature. Some studies report antidepressant-adjacent and nootropic effects. These are reported research findings, largely from a single national research tradition and mostly not independently replicated in Western trials, so they carry meaningful uncertainty. Nothing here is a promise of efficacy or a personal recommendation.
What the individual studies actually claim is worth separating from the summary. The 2008 trial describes the anxiolytic effect as similar to medazepam and adds antiasthenic and psychostimulant effects as secondary observations. The 2014 trial describes pronounced anxiolytic and mild nootropic effects, and reports that the anxiolytic effect lasted for a week after the last administration - the durability observation that circulates most widely for this compound, and one that is stated without any supporting figure. The 2015 study measured cognition directly with the Stroop and verbal-fluency tests alongside a dedicated side-effect scale, which is the most instrument-rich assessment in the set, and published no value from any of them.
A separate strand concerns immune signalling rather than mood. A 2008 paper (PMID 18577961) reported that the peptide suppressed interleukin-6 gene expression in blood cells from patients with depression while raising IL-6 concentration in cell culture, and observed a shift in Th1/Th2 balance in patients treated for fourteen days. That is a mechanistic finding in a patient sample rather than a clinical outcome - no infection rate or illness frequency was measured - and the direction is not simple, since the same paper reports suppression in one condition and an increase in another. The immunological plausibility comes from the molecule itself: its first four residues are tuftsin, whose known role is immunomodulatory.
Evidence & regulatory status
Evidence base: developed at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the Zakusov Institute of Pharmacology. Clinical studies in generalized anxiety disorder and neurasthenia have been published, largely in Russian-language journals, alongside preclinical work on monoamine and BDNF effects.
A caution on source concentration: as with several peptides in this family, the literature originates predominantly from Russian research groups and has seen limited independent Western replication. Study sizes are generally small.
How large the literature actually is, measured rather than estimated: a PubMed search on the term returns 136 records, but fetching all of them and testing each for whether the compound is named in its title, abstract or keywords leaves 68. Half the apparent literature reaches the result set through automatic term expansion and concerns unrelated subjects entirely. Any figure quoting well over a hundred studies for this compound is counting records that are not about it.
What carries the clinical case: exactly three of those records carry a clinical-trial publication type. They are a 2008 comparison against medazepam in 62 patients with generalized anxiety disorder and neurasthenia (PMID 18454096), a 2014 comparison against phenazepam in 60 patients with phobic-anxiety and somatoform disorders (PMID 25176261), and a 2015 study of 70 patients in which the peptide was added to phenazepam rather than replacing it (PMID 26356395). Two of the three share an author group and all three appeared in the same journal.
The limitation that matters most, and it is a reporting one rather than a design one: none of those three abstracts publishes an effect size, a p-value, a confidence interval, a responder rate or a dropout count, and two of the three do not state the dose or the treatment duration. The comparisons with benzodiazepines are stated qualitatively. Full Russian-language texts may contain the tables the abstracts omit, but on the record that is publicly retrievable there is no quantity a reader can check.
Registration status, checked directly: there is no interventional registration for this compound on ClinicalTrials.gov under its name or its sequence. That is not a criticism of trials conducted in another jurisdiction before any such obligation applied, but it does mean no protocol, primary endpoint or statistical plan was filed publicly before the data were collected.
Regulatory status: Selank is registered and prescribed as a medicine in Russia but is not FDA-approved and is not an approved medicine in the United States. Material supplied here is for laboratory and research purposes only.
Research timeline
Dated milestones taken from the primary records: the molecule's discovery, its first registered human study, the trials that shaped the evidence and the regulatory decisions. Each entry links to the record it comes from.
The oldest Selank paper PubMed indexes, from Moscow's Mental Health Centre of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, reports that the seven-amino-acid peptide inhibited the blood enzymes that break down enkephalins and proposes this as the basis of its anti-anxiety effect. PMID 11550013
A Russian clinical study compares Selank (30 patients) with the benzodiazepine medazepam (32 patients) in generalised anxiety disorder and neurasthenia and reports similar anti-anxiety effects, with additional anti-fatigue and stimulant effects for Selank. PMID 18454096
A second Russian study, in 60 patients with anxiety and somatoform disorders, compares Selank with the benzodiazepine phenazepam and reports a pronounced anti-anxiety effect lasting a week after the last dose; the abstract gives no comparison figures between the two drugs. PMID 25176261
FDA's page on compounding safety risks, as updated on this date, lists Selank acetate (TP-7) among substances that had been in Category 2 and whose nominations were withdrawn, citing possible immunogenicity and impurities and a lack of safety information on its use in people. FDA · compounding safety risks, Apr 22, 2026
Records checked Oct 4, 2026
Claims at a glance
The claims most often made about this compound, each with the strongest kind of evidence we found for it. The grade says what was studied, not whether the claim is true; the line beside it says what that study showed.
Relieves anxiety as well as a benzodiazepineHuman, non-randomised. Two Russian trials of 62 and 60 patients reported effects similar to a benzodiazepine; neither had a placebo group or published an effect size. PMID 25176261
Causes no sedation or dependenceHuman, non-randomised. Described as non-sedating across three small trials; no study has tested dependence or withdrawal, so that half rests on an absence of reports. PMID 26356395
Lifts fatigue and sharpens thinkingHuman, non-randomised. Anti-fatigue and mild nootropic effects are reported in two of the anxiety trials, in the same direction, but without any size of effect. PMID 18454096
Regulates the immune systemHuman, non-randomised. Shifts in blood cytokines in anxious patients over 14 days, and effects on blood cells in culture; no clinical immune outcome was measured. PMID 18577961
Calms the brain's anxiety circuitsHuman, non-randomised. One imaging study in 52 healthy people found changed amygdala connectivity against placebo; anxiety itself was not measured. PMID 32342318
The reasoning behind each grade, study by study, is in this guide's Benefit & Outcome Review.
Grades checked Oct 5, 2026
A printable reference sheet with the compound's key facts, storage guidance and a vial record comes with All-Access Lifetime.
Half-life & pharmacokinetics
No primary pharmacokinetic study establishing a plasma half-life for Selank has been located in any species, and the figures in circulation - most often "20-30 minutes" - trace back to studies in which the half-life measured belongs to leu-enkephalin, the peptide Selank protects from degradation by inhibiting enkephalinases, rather than to Selank itself (PMID 11550013, PMID 12432865). What is documented for Selank is the degradation pathway rather than a rate: a tritium-labelling study identified the pentapeptide TKPRP, the tripeptide TKP and the dipeptides RP and GP as its major plasma breakdown products (PMID 16637290). The Pro-Gly-Pro tail extends stability relative to native tuftsin but has not been shown to produce a long plasma half-life. Reported behavioral effects are described as outlasting measurable plasma concentrations, which the literature attributes to downstream changes in monoamine and neurotrophic signaling rather than to sustained exposure. This is the stated rationale for repeated daily administration in reported protocols.
Reported side effects & toxicology
Selank is generally described as well tolerated in the available studies, with reported issues limited mainly to local irritation from intranasal administration, occasional headache, and injection-site reactions where injected. It is specifically reported not to produce the sedation, motor impairment, tolerance, withdrawal or dependence associated with benzodiazepines, which is a central claim of this literature. As with Epithalon, the thinness and national concentration of the evidence base means an apparently clean safety profile is weaker evidence than it first appears, and long-term safety has not been established in independent trials.
The dependence claim deserves to be stated precisely, because it is the one doing most of the commercial work. No withdrawal study, tolerance study or discontinuation trial of this compound appears anywhere in the retrievable literature. The claim of no dependence therefore rests on nothing having been reported, which is not the same as a study having looked and found nothing. For courses of about two weeks that absence is unsurprising and is not evidence of a problem - but it is an absence, not a demonstrated safety property, and it should not be read as one.
The strongest positive evidence on tolerability is indirect. In the 2015 add-on study, adding the peptide to phenazepam was reported to reduce that benzodiazepine's own side effects - attention and memory impairment, asthenia, sedation, increased sleep duration, sexual disturbance and orthostatism - both during treatment and after the tranquilizer was withdrawn. Side effects were tracked with the UKU scale. As everywhere else in this literature, no rate or score was published for any of them. These are reported observations, not an exhaustive safety profile, and nothing here is medical advice.
Storage & handling
Lyophilized (unreconstituted) vials are typically stored refrigerated and protected from light; the sealed powder is generally described as stable at room temperature for short periods before use.
After reconstitution, keep refrigerated at about 2-8 C, protect from light, and use within a few weeks; do not freeze and avoid shaking.
References
Sources include research from the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Zakusov Institute of Pharmacology on Selank's development and anxiolytic profile; published clinical studies in generalized anxiety disorder and neurasthenia; and preclinical work on monoamine metabolism, BDNF expression and enkephalin degradation. Readers should note that this literature is predominantly Russian-language, generally small in study size, and has seen limited independent Western replication.
Evidence File
The Selank Evidence File: Half the Census Is Not About Selank, and Three Trials Carry Everything
Selank's reputation rests on Russian clinical trials that are real, registered nowhere, and published without a single effect size. This file enumerates the whole indexed literature and shows that half of it is not about this compound at all, inventories the four human reports one by one with their designs and their stated numbers, separates the three that are trials from the two that are routinely counted as if they were, and traces the enkephalin mechanism story back to the 2001 enzyme-kinetics paper it actually comes from. Every absence is established by a named search with its result quoted, so it can be re-run rather than taken on trust.
136 PubMed records match the term selank; exactly 68 are about the compound
Only 3 records in the entire literature carry a clinical-trial publication type
0 effect sizes, p-values or confidence intervals in any of those 3 trial abstracts
0 interventional registrations on ClinicalTrials.gov under any name or sequence
The census, and why the headline number is exactly double the real one
The complete human record: five records, four reports, three trials
What the trials do not contain, tested rather than asserted
The registration absence, and the search trap that hides it
Where the half-life figure comes from, and why it is not selank's
What would change this picture
6 more sections in the Evidence File for Selank
Unlock the Evidence File, Sourcing File and Benefit & Outcome Review for Selank for $14 — or every compound in the library, plus the printable reference sheets, for $99.
The sections above this one stay free to read without an account.
Sourcing File
The Selank Sourcing File: One Number on the Mass Spectrum Separates It From What Is Sold as It
Selank has a close analogue that is widely sold under the same name, differs by two chemical modifications, and is 41 daltons heavier. That single mass difference is the most reliable check a buyer has, and most certificates are never read for it. This file sets out selank's full identifier chain from PubChem rather than from vendor copy, gives the exact masses both molecules should produce, explains what the acetate salt does to the amount actually in the vial, and works through what a certificate of analysis has to show before it is evidence of anything.
41.03 Da separates Selank from the analogue most often sold under its name
5 independent identifiers should agree before a vial is accepted
2 basic residues drive the acetate content that lowers net peptide
751.9 average mass; a certificate reporting 793 is a different molecule
The identifier chain, re-derived rather than repeated
The substitution that mass spectrometry catches and a label does not
The acetate salt, and why gross weight overstates what is in the vial
Reading a certificate for this compound specifically
Storage and handling, and what degrades this sequence
5 more sections in the Sourcing File for Selank
Unlock the Evidence File, Sourcing File and Benefit & Outcome Review for Selank for $14 — or every compound in the library, plus the printable reference sheets, for $99.
The sections above this one stay free to read without an account.
Benefit & Outcome Review
The Selank Benefit & Outcome Review: Four Claims, and the Measurement Behind Each One
Selank is described as an anxiolytic without sedation, an antiasthenic, a mild nootropic and an immunomodulator. Three of those four descriptions come from studies that report no numbers at all, and the fourth comes from a cell-culture experiment. This review takes each claim separately, states exactly what was measured and in whom, keeps the human work apart from the animal and in-vitro work, and says plainly where a claim is supported by an observation and where it is supported only by an adjective.
4 distinct benefit claims, traced to their originating documents
3 rest on trial abstracts that publish no effect size of any kind
1 human p-value exists across the whole literature, for a cytokine in cell culture
The no-dependence claim rests on an absence of reports, not on a withdrawal study
Claim one: anxiolysis comparable to a benzodiazepine
Claim two: no sedation, no dependence, no withdrawal
Claim three: antiasthenic and mild nootropic effects
Claim four: immunomodulation
Time course, non-responders and what nobody has measured
The honest closing summary
6 more sections in the Benefit & Outcome Review for Selank
Unlock the Evidence File, Sourcing File and Benefit & Outcome Review for Selank for $14 — or every compound in the library, plus the printable reference sheets, for $99.
Quick answers about guide scope, access, and educational use context.
Is Selank FDA-approved?
No. Selank is registered and prescribed as a medicine in Russia, where it was developed at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the Zakusov Institute of Pharmacology. It is not FDA-approved, is not an approved medicine in the United States, and material supplied here is for laboratory and research purposes only.
How many studies are there on Selank?
Far fewer than the headline number suggests. A PubMed search on the term returns 136 records, but only 68 of them name the compound anywhere in their title, abstract or keywords - the rest arrive through automatic term expansion and concern unrelated subjects. Of those 68, exactly three carry a clinical-trial publication type. Three more are reviews rather than reports of data.
Has Selank been compared with benzodiazepines?
Yes, in patients and against active comparators, which is more than most compounds in this category have. A 2008 study compared it with medazepam in 62 patients and a 2014 study compared it with phenazepam in 60. Both concluded the anxiolytic effects were comparable. The important caveat is that neither abstract publishes a scale score, a change score, a p-value or a confidence interval, so the comparison rests on the authors' description rather than on figures a reader can check. Neither study included a placebo arm.
What is Selank's half-life?
No primary pharmacokinetic study establishing a plasma half-life for Selank was located in any species. The half-life figures in circulation trace back to leu-enkephalin, an endogenous peptide whose breakdown Selank slows - both the 2001 enzyme-kinetics paper and the 2008 trial discuss the half-life of leu-enkephalin, not of Selank. Reading that parameter as the peptide's own is the substitution that produces the numbers seen on vendor pages. Reported effects also outlast any plausible plasma exposure, which is a separate reason the figure would not explain much even if it existed.
Does Selank cause dependence or withdrawal?
No withdrawal, tolerance or discontinuation study of Selank appears in the retrievable literature, so the widely repeated claim that it causes neither is supported by an absence of reports rather than by a study that looked. That is a meaningful distinction. What has been measured, in the 2015 add-on study, is that adding Selank to a benzodiazepine reduced that drug's own side effects during treatment and after withdrawal - reported without figures, like everything else in this literature.
Is Selank the same as N-Acetyl Selank Amidate?
No, and the two are frequently sold under the same name. N-Acetyl Selank Amidate carries an acetyl group on one end and an amide on the other, giving an average mass of 792.94 against Selank's 751.89 - a difference of 41.03 daltons that any quality-control mass spectrum separates easily. The distinction matters beyond identity: the clinical studies described on this page were conducted on the 751.9 molecule, and there is no published study of the acetylated analogue as a distinct compound.
What is Selank?
Selank is a synthetic heptapeptide (Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg-Pro-Gly-Pro) derived from the immune peptide tuftsin with a stabilizing Pro-Gly-Pro extension. It is studied in Russian research as an anxiolytic reported to work without sedation or dependence. It is registered as a medicine in Russia but is not FDA-approved and is supplied here for research use only.
Is Selank taken intranasally or injected?
Intranasal is the predominant route - the registered Russian product is a 0.15% intranasal solution and most published research uses that route. Subcutaneous injection is described in some research settings, but it is worth knowing that the evidence base is built mainly on intranasal administration rather than injection.
Is there an established Selank dose?
Only inside the Russian registration: the registered product's reported daily amounts run from a few hundred micrograms up to around 900 mcg divided across the day. The per-administration amounts and courses that community protocols describe for research material have no such basis, and this page does not reproduce them. None of this is a recommendation.
How does Selank compare with Semax?
They come from the same Russian research tradition and are frequently discussed together. Selank derives from tuftsin and is framed around anxiety and stress adaptation; Semax derives from an ACTH fragment and is framed around focus, attention and neuroprotection. Both are registered in Russia, neither is FDA-approved, and both have evidence bases concentrated in Russian-language literature.
Does this page tell me how much Selank to use?
No. The amounts shown are examples reported in research and community settings, provided for educational context. This page does not recommend a personal dose, route or frequency and is not medical advice.
Compliance and trust notes
Educational content only; no personalized health or outcome claims.
No personalized use recommendation outputs.
Use this material for general learning and research-context literacy.
A certificate of analysis (COA) is a laboratory’s report on one sample of one batch. The single most useful thing to know about it is that purity and identity are two separate results that fail in different ways. A high purity figure says the sample was mostly one substance; it does not say that substance was Selank. Identity — normally a mass-spectrometry result matching the expected molecular weight — is what establishes what the material actually is, and a certificate reporting purity alone has not answered that question.
Two further limits are worth holding onto. Mass per vial is its own test: a vial can be 99% pure and still contain less material than the label claims. And sterility, endotoxin, heavy metals and residual solvent screening are separately commissioned tests, usually priced individually — so a “third-party tested” badge asserts none of them unless the certificate names them. Check that the batch or lot number on the document matches the vial in front of you; an unmatched certificate describes someone else’s material.
Medibact does not test, endorse or resell peptides, and publishes no rating of any laboratory. How to read a peptide certificate of analysis walks through the document section by section, and what each COA field establishes covers the field-by-field detail and the laboratories that publish their methods.
You’ll need bacteriostatic water
The diluent for reconstituting Selank
Reconstitution is volume arithmetic — it assumes a lyophilized vial is dissolved in bacteriostatic water, which is sterile water preserved with 0.9% benzyl alcohol. The preservative is what allows a vial to be entered more than once; plain sterile water carries none and is single-entry by design. Medibact supplies USP-grade Bacteriostatic Water for Injection in a 30 mL multi-dose vial, produced in an FDA-registered U.S. facility and shipped from the United States, for research use only. One 30 mL vial covers 30 reconstitutions at 1 mL each, 15 at 2 mL, or 10 at 3 mL — division only, not a dosing recommendation.
Educational use only — not medical advice. This guide summarizes information reported in published research and community practice for educational purposes. It is not medical advice and not a recommendation to use any compound. Any doses, schedules, or combinations shown are examples of what has been reported, not instructions for you. Many peptides described here are research compounds that are not FDA-approved for the uses discussed and may be investigational or restricted. Effects, risks, and legal status vary; individual needs and results vary. Consult a qualified, licensed healthcare professional before making any decision. Do not use this content to diagnose, treat, or dose yourself.
