What Selank is

Selank is a synthetic heptapeptide built from tuftsin, a naturally occurring immunomodulatory tetrapeptide, with the same Pro-Gly-Pro tail used in Semax added to resist enzymatic degradation. Tuftsin itself is a fragment of the immunoglobulin heavy chain, which is an unusual origin for a compound studied for anxiolytic properties, and the connection between its immune-derived parent and its neurological research profile is one of the more genuinely odd things about it. Like Semax it is a Russian development with most of its literature published in Russian and little Western clinical work.

How Selank compares

Against Semax: the pair are conventionally described as opposites, Selank as calming and Semax as stimulating, and they are frequently supplied together for that reason. They share only a country of origin and the Pro-Gly-Pro tail. Against benzodiazepines, which Selank is often compared to in the Russian literature: it is a peptide with an entirely different mechanism and no GABA-A receptor activity.