Selank: an anxiolytic peptide that is not a benzodiazepine, on evidence from one country
An anxiolytic with a mechanism that is not the usual one, a clinical history in a country whose research rarely gets replicated elsewhere, and the same evidence gap that applies to everything in that category.
Regulatory status. Approved drug in Russia for anxiety and asthenic conditions. Research compound in Western countries. That is the app’s own field, reproduced here rather than summarised. It means no regulator has reviewed a manufacturer’s evidence for identity, purity, potency or safety in people for this compound, so nothing below is a marketing claim about a product you can buy.
Purity, identity and concentration are therefore unverified by anyone but whoever made the vial. The storage rule in the fact box below is general practice for this formulation rather than a specification for a particular product: General handling practice for this formulation. Your supplier’s own insert or COA overrides anything here.
This page names no vendor, no clinic and no testing service, and there is no discount code anywhere on this site — the moment a page like this recommends where to buy, it stops being information.
- Also known as
- TP-7
- Class
- Neurological and cognitive
- Regulatory status
- Approved drug in Russia for anxiety and asthenic conditions. Research compound in Western countries.
- Before mixing
- Sealed powder tolerates room temperature in transit, but keep it refrigerated at 2–8 °C (36–46 °F) for anything beyond a few weeks, or frozen for months. Keep it dark — the carton it shipped in is doing a job.
- After mixing
- Once reconstituted with bacteriostatic water: refrigerate at 2–8 °C and use within about 28 days. The benzyl alcohol in bacteriostatic water is what buys that window — plain sterile water has no preservative, so a vial mixed with it should be treated as one sitting only. Kits are usually ten vials: only the one you mixed is on that 28-day clock — the sealed ones keep their own, much longer shelf life, so store them as powder, not as solution.
- What ruins it
- Do not freeze a reconstituted vial. Repeated freeze–thaw is one of the more reliable ways to degrade a peptide.
- Handling caveat
- General handling practice for this formulation. Your supplier’s own insert or COA overrides anything here.
Derived from an immune peptide, acting on anxiety
Established clinical use Tuftsin is a naturally occurring tetrapeptide fragment of an immunoglobulin, with immune-modulating activity. Selank is a synthetic heptapeptide analogue of it, stabilised with a proline-glycine-proline tail — the same stabilising trick used on semax, from the same research programme.
Animal-only or theoretical Its reported mechanism is not the benzodiazepine one. Rather than binding the GABA-A receptor directly, it is described as modulating GABA-A subunit expression and affecting serotonin and dopamine turnover, alongside raising brain-derived neurotrophic factor. The claimed consequence is the profile that makes it interesting: anxiolysis without sedation, without cognitive dulling, and without the tolerance and dependence that define the benzodiazepines.
That is an appealing profile and it is exactly the kind of claim that needs independent confirmation, because "works like a benzodiazepine without any of the drawbacks" is what every anxiolytic in development has claimed. The app records no half-life for it — none has been published — which is why the fact box above has no pharmacokinetic rows.
Approved there, unstudied here
Off-label or community practice Selank is an approved medicine in Russia for anxiety and asthenic conditions, with clinical use behind it. That is more than most compounds in this reference have. What does not exist is a published randomised controlled trial from investigators outside the research tradition that produced it, which is the same limitation that applies to semax, epithalon and the Khavinson peptides.
The criticism is not that the work is wrong. It is that a finding concentrated in one research lineage is weaker evidence than the same finding from several, and independent replication is what is missing rather than what has failed. A reader outside Russia cannot obtain the approved product in any case, so what is available is research-supply material with identity and purity resting on whoever made it. This site names no vendor or testing service.
What people report, and the caution that matters
Reported effects are subtle rather than dramatic: reduced anxiety without a sedative feel, and some report better verbal fluency and mood. Nasal irritation is the common local effect of the intranasal route. The app records no bloodwork, honestly — nothing on a routine panel reflects this, so assessment is entirely subjective, which makes it easy to attribute a good fortnight to the peptide.
Animal-only or theoretical The caution worth stating is about what anxiety is. It is a diagnosable condition with treatments that work, and treating it with an unstudied peptide instead of seeking care is the specific harm available here — more so than with most compounds in this reference, because the symptom itself discourages people from going. Anyone using this alongside psychiatric medication, or instead of seeking help for anxiety that is affecting their life, should be having that conversation with a clinician.
The semax page covers the other peptide from the same programme, which is described as stimulating where this one is described as calming. Both carry the same replication gap and the same sourcing problem.
The dosing rows the app records
Off-label or community practice Reproduced from the app’s reference so you can see what it holds, not as a recommendation. Which row applies to a particular person, if any, is a clinical decision this page does not make — and rows describing supraphysiological or post-cycle use are filtered out before this table is built, so what you see here is a subset.
| Label | Amount | Route and frequency | Duration recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anxiety / Cognitive (Intranasal) | 250-500mcg | Intranasal 2-3x daily | 2-4 weeks on / 2 weeks off |
| Anxiety / Cognitive (SubQ) | 250-300mcg | Subcutaneous injection 1-2x daily | 2-4 weeks on / 2 weeks off |
| Anxiolytic | 250–500mcg/dose | Intranasal, 2–3x/day | 2–4 weeks as needed |
| Nootropic | 750–1500mcg/day | Intranasal, split doses | 2–4 weeks on, 2 weeks off |
What the app monitors alongside it
The panel below is the app’s own monitoring note for Selank, verbatim. None of the analytes it names has a page here yet.
- Monitoring panel
- Mood and cognitive self-assessment. No specific blood monitoring required.
Drawbacks and risks the app records
From the app’s own entry. The limited-Western-data item and the source-quality item are the two that actually constrain what can be said here.
- Limited Western clinical trial data
- Intranasal route inconvenient for some
- Short half-life — multiple daily doses needed
- Some report nasal irritation
- Long-term effects not well established
- Not FDA approved
- Limited Western clinical trials
- Intranasal administration can cause nasal irritation
- Effects vary significantly by individual
- Source quality varies
Questions people actually ask
Is it like a benzodiazepine?
Not mechanistically. It is described as modulating GABA-A subunit expression rather than binding the receptor directly, and the claimed absence of sedation, tolerance and dependence is the reason it is interesting. That claim has not been independently tested.
Why is there no half-life in the fact box?
Because none has been published, so the app holds none. Duration figures quoted elsewhere for this peptide are not coming from a characterisation study.
Intranasal or injected?
The approved clinical use is intranasal and the app records both routes. Whether intranasal delivery produces a meaningful central concentration is the least well answered question about this whole family.
Can it replace treatment for anxiety?
No, and that is the one thing on this page worth being direct about. Anxiety has treatments with evidence behind them, and substituting an unstudied peptide is the specific risk here.
Where the load-bearing numbers come from
Named rather than linked. Publisher URLs move, and a citation that resolves to a 404 two years from now is worse than one you can search for by name — every entry below is findable from the title and year alone.
- Tuftsin analogue structure
- The peptide’s published design; a stabilised heptapeptide analogue of an immunoglobulin fragment
- GABA-A subunit and monoamine effects
- Animal and cell work from the Russian research programme; not independently replicated in the West
- Approval and clinical use
- The approval string in the fact box is app.html’s own field, reproduced verbatim
- Absence of pharmacokinetic data
- app.html holds no half-life or time-to-peak entry for this compound, which is why no such rows appear above
A subjective effect with no lab behind it needs a dated record to mean anything. TherapyLog keeps the dose and your own note together.
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