Selank

What is Selank?

Selank is a synthetic heptapeptide built from tuftsin, a natural immune-signaling peptide, with extra amino acids added to make it last longer in the body. Russian researchers at the Institute of Molecular Genetics developed it as an anxiolytic, and it has been a registered drug in Russia since 2009. The pitch is anxiety relief without the sedation, tolerance, and dependence that come with benzodiazepines. Outside Russia it is not approved and is sold as a research compound.

How Selank works

Selank acts on the GABA system, the brain's main calming circuit, behaving as a positive modulator of GABA binding. That overlaps with how benzodiazepines work, but the interaction is not the same and does not appear to be additive. It also shifts serotonin and dopamine turnover, influences BDNF expression, and slows the breakdown of enkephalins, the body's own opioid-like peptides. Because of its tuftsin origin it retains some immune-modulating activity too, which is unusual for an anxiolytic.

What the research shows

The most cited human data is a Russian trial by Zozulya and colleagues in patients with generalized anxiety disorder and neurasthenia. Selank produced anxiety reduction broadly comparable to the benzodiazepine medazepam, with added anti-asthenic effect and no sedation, and the benefit persisted for about a week after stopping. That is a genuinely interesting result, but it is one modest study. As with Semax, most of the Selank literature is Russian-language, sample sizes are small by Western standards, and no large independent group has replicated it. Much of the mechanistic detail comes from rodent work.

Dosage and how it is used

There is no approved dose outside Russia. In the approved market it is given intranasally, and the Zozulya trial used 450 mcg three times daily for 14 days. Community protocols copy the intranasal route but are not standardized, so treat any figure as convention rather than validated dosing.

→ How to reconstitute Selank: calculator, units to draw & storage

Side effects and safety

In the trials Selank was well tolerated, with a notable absence of the sedation, cognitive dulling, and withdrawal seen with benzodiazepines. Real Russian clinical use going back over a decade has not flagged major safety problems at approved doses. Still, it has no Western regulatory review and no long-term safety data for the off-label self-use common elsewhere.

• Reported to relieve anxiety without benzodiazepine-style sedation, tolerance, or dependence.
• Human evidence is real but limited to small, mostly Russian-language, unreplicated trials.
• Not FDA-approved. Legal status varies by jurisdiction. Verify current status independently.

Frequently asked questions

References

• Zozulya AA et al. Efficacy and mechanisms of the peptide anxiolytic Selank in generalized anxiety disorder and neurasthenia. 2008.
• Peptide-based Anxiolytics: The Molecular Aspects of Heptapeptide Selank Biological Activity. Protein & Peptide Letters, 2018.