Everything below concerns Melanocortin receptor. We keep the language plain, cite what the science says, and separate well-supported claims from open questions.
Updated 2025-07-13. Numbers and descriptions here follow the published literature rather than marketing material.
The proposed mechanism centres on neurotrophic signalling rather than direct receptor activation. Semax is reported to increase expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and nerve growth factor in several brain regions, and to shift the balance between excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitter systems. Interaction with melanocortin receptors has been suggested because of the parent ACTH fragment. Many of these findings come from rodent studies, and the extent to which they translate to human physiology remains an open question.
Scientific literature on semax is unevenly distributed. A substantial share of published work originates from a small number of laboratories in Russia, while independent replication elsewhere is limited. Human data consist mostly of small trials with short follow-up, and several reported outcomes rely on subjective rating scales. Questions about how much intact peptide reaches the central nervous system after nasal administration, and how long it persists there, are still unresolved. The compound is best described as an active research subject rather than a settled pharmacological agent.
Semax is supplied as a lyophilized powder that appears white to off-white. It dissolves readily in water, phosphate-buffered saline, and other aqueous media, which simplifies preparation of working solutions for laboratory use. The nasal products registered in Russia are dilute aqueous solutions, typically around 0.1 percent peptide by weight. Organic solvents are rarely necessary and can complicate handling. Because the peptide is hygroscopic, weighing should be performed quickly and with minimal exposure to ambient humidity.
Solid material is normally kept at minus 20 degrees Celsius in a sealed, desiccated container. Reconstituted solutions are less stable and are usually divided into single-use aliquots before freezing. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles are avoided because they promote aggregation and loss of activity. Light exposure is minimized by using amber glassware or foil wrapping. Published stability data for this peptide are sparse, so recommended storage conditions rest mainly on general practice for short synthetic peptides rather than on dedicated study.
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Molecular formula | C37H51N9O10S | Calculated for the free peptide |
| Molar mass | 813.9 g/mol | Anhydrous free base |
| Peptide class | Synthetic heptapeptide | ACTH(4-10) analogue |
| Parent fragment | ACTH(4-10) | Adrenocorticotropic hormone segment |
| Developmental origin | Institute of Molecular Genetics, Moscow | Work began in the 1980s |
The parent fragment ACTH(4-10) carries the sequence Met-Glu-His-Phe-Arg-Trp-Gly. Semax replaces the arginine and tryptophan positions with a proline-glycine-proline tail, giving Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro. That change removes residues associated with adrenal stimulation, so the peptide does not drive cortisol release the way full ACTH does. This distinction shapes how the compound is grouped in the literature, where it sits with neuropeptides and peptide neuromodulators rather than with corticosteroids.
Regulatory status varies sharply by country. Semax is registered for medical use in Russia, where it appears in formularies as a nasal solution, and it also holds registration in a small number of neighbouring states. It has no approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration or the European Medicines Agency, and it is not a scheduled controlled substance in most jurisdictions. Elsewhere it circulates mainly as laboratory material, so purity documentation comes from suppliers rather than from a national pharmacopoeia.
Published research has focused mainly on neurological and cognitive endpoints in animal models, with proposed mechanisms involving brain-derived neurotrophic factor and related signalling pathways. A substantial share of the human data originates from a limited number of research groups, and independent replication in other countries remains sparse. Regulatory status reflects that distribution: the peptide is registered as a medicine in Russia and appears in some neighbouring markets, while elsewhere it is handled as a research chemical without approved therapeutic labelling. Questions about dose-response relationships, long-term effects, and comparability across studies are still open.
Lyophilised powder is normally kept at -20 °C in a desiccated container, with some suppliers recommending -80 °C for long-term archival storage. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles are the most common cause of avoidable loss, so aliquoting before freezing reduces variability between working sessions. Dissolved peptide is far less stable than the dry solid and is usually prepared fresh or held briefly at 4 °C. Aqueous solutions support both hydrolysis of the backbone and oxidation of the N-terminal methionine, and these two routes dominate degradation under ordinary laboratory conditions.
Reported pharmacological work centers on neurotrophic signaling, including changes in BDNF and NGF expression in hippocampal tissue in animal models. Human data come largely from studies conducted in Russia, and how well those results generalize to other populations remains an open question. Regulatory status differs sharply by jurisdiction: Semax is a registered prescription medicine in Russia, while it holds no approved marketing status in the United States or the European Union. Outside such jurisdictions it is generally handled as a research chemical, which affects both documentation and quality expectations.
Semax is a synthetic heptapeptide whose sequence is Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro. It was developed as a fragment analog of adrenocorticotropic hormone, modeled specifically on the ACTH(4-10) region. The first four residues reproduce that fragment, while a Pro-Gly-Pro tripeptide is appended at the C-terminus. Work on the compound originated in Russia, where it entered clinical use as an intranasal preparation. Its sequence places it among short regulatory peptides studied for effects on the central nervous system rather than on the adrenal axis.
Stanley Adams, Roche's World Product Manager in Basel, contacted the European Economic Community in 1973 with evidence that Roche had been breaking antitrust laws, engaging in price fixing and market sharing for vitamins with its competitors. Roche was fined accordingly, but a bungle on the part of the EEC allowed the company to discover that it was Adams who had blown the whistle. He was arrested for unauthorised disclosure — an offence under Swiss law — and imprisoned. His wife, having learnt that he might face decades in jail, committed suicide. In 1999 the firm pleaded guilty to participation in a worldwide conspiracy to raise and fix prices for vitamins sold in the US and globally. Hoffmann-La Roche paid $500 million in criminal fines to the United States.
=== Vacuum === SIMS requires a high vacuum with pressures below 10−4 Pa (roughly 10−6 mbar or torr). This is needed to ensure that secondary ions do not collide with background gases on their way to the detector (i.e., the mean free path of gas molecules within the detector must be large compared to the size of the instrument), and it also limits surface contamination by adsorption of background gas particles during measurement.
=== Pharmacodynamics === Rivastigmine, a cholinesterase inhibitor, inhibits both butyrylcholinesterase and acetylcholinesterase (unlike donepezil, which selectively inhibits acetylcholinesterase). It is thought to work by inhibiting these cholinesterase enzymes, which would otherwise break down the brain neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Both these levels are raised to be close in energy to the 7s ones, high enough to possibly be chemically active. This would allow for the possibility of exotic nihonium compounds without lighter group 13 analogues. Periodic trends would predict nihonium to have an atomic radius larger than that of thallium due to it being one period further down the periodic table, but calculations suggest nihonium has an atomic radius of about 170 pm, the same as that of thallium, due to the relativistic stabilisation and contraction of its 7s and 7p1/2 orbitals. Thus, nihonium is expected to be much denser than thallium, with a predicted density of about 16 to 18 g/cm3 compared to thallium's 11.85 g/cm3, since nihonium atoms are heavier than thallium atoms but have the same volume. Bulk nihonium is expected to have a hexagonal close-packed crystal structure, like thallium. The melting and boiling points of nihonium have been predicted to be 430 °C and 1100 °C respectively, exceeding the values for indium and thallium, following periodic trends. Nihonium should have a bulk modulus of 20.8 GPa, about half that of thallium (43 GPa).
Faggots, or savoury ducks, are meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal (especially pork, and traditionally pig's heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon) mixed with herbs and sometimes bread crumbs. It is a traditional dish in the United Kingdom, especially South and Mid Wales and the English Midlands. Faggots originated as a traditional cheap food consumed by country people in Western England, particularly west Wiltshire and the West Midlands. Their popularity spread from there, especially to South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, when many agricultural workers left the land to work in the rapidly expanding industry and mines of that area. The alternative name "savoury ducks" is regional to Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire. The first reference to savoury ducks in print was in the Manchester Courier on Saturday 3 June 1843.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
== Species distribution == Across vertebrates, four paralogous TCAPs (TCAP-1–4) exhibit structural similarity to corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and other secretin-family peptides and have been shown in rodent and non-mammalian models to exert anxiolytic-like effects, modulate glucose and energy homeostasis, and participate in broader tissue-specific signaling, highlighting TCAPs as evolutionarily conserved peptides.
Bovine somatotropin or bovine somatotrophin (abbreviated bST and BST), or bovine growth hormone (BGH), is a peptide hormone produced by cows' pituitary glands. Like other hormones, it is produced in small quantities and is used in regulating metabolic processes. Recombinant bovine somatotropin (usually "rBST") is a synthetic version of the bovine growth hormone given to dairy cattle by injection to increase milk production. BST increases milk production by around 10 percent. Controversy over its safety for cows has led to rBST being banned in several countries, including the European Union since 1990, and Canada, Japan, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, as it has been found to increase health risks in cows. The Codex Alimentarius has not approved it as safe. The FDA approved it in 1993 and gave guidance to manufacturers that marking a product as "bST-free" or "rbST free" is misleading and a less misleading text would be "No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-treated and non-rbST-treated cows".
=== Proto-gene model === This proto-gene model agrees with the preadaptation model about the importance of pervasive expression, and refers to the set of pervasively expressed sequences that do not meet all definitions of a gene as "proto-genes". In contrast to the preadaptation model, the proto-gene model, suggests newborn genes have features intermediate between old genes and non-genes. Specifically this model envisages a more gradual process under selection from non-genic to genic state, rejecting the binary classification of gene and non-gene. In an extension of the proto-gene model, it has been proposed that as proto-genes become more gene-like, their potential for adaptive change gives way to selected effects; thus, the predicted impact of mutations on fitness is dependent on the evolutionary status of the ORF. This notion is supported by the fact that overexpression of established ORFs in S. cerevisiae tends to be less beneficial (and more harmful) than does overexpression of emerging ORFs. Several features of ORFs correlate with ORF age as determined by phylostratigraphic analysis, with young ORFs having properties intermediate between old ORFs and non-genes; this has been taken as evidence in favor of the proto-gene model, in which proto-gene state is a continuum . This evidence has been criticized, because the same apparent trends are also expected under a model in which identity as a gene is a binary. Under this model, when each age group contains a different ratio of genes vs. non-genes, Simpson's paradox can generate correlations in the wrong direction.
=== Nordic countries === Norway was the first country in the world to outlaw beak trimming in 1974, followed by Finland in 1986 and Sweden in 1988. Beak trimming was subsequently phased out in Denmark in two stages: in 2013 for the enriched cage system and in 2014 for aviary and free range systems.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
=== Cognitive function === In many respects, nicotine acts on the nervous system in a similar way to caffeine. Some writings have stated that smoking can also increase mental concentration; one study documents a significantly better performance on the Advanced Raven Progressive Matrices test after smoking. However, long-term usage of tobacco can create cognitive dysfunction. There seems to be an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD), although "case–control and cohort studies produce conflicting results as to the direction of the association between smoking and AD". Smoking has been found to contribute to dementia and cognitive decline, reduced memory and cognitive abilities in adolescents, and brain shrinkage (cerebral atrophy).
=== 7 May === Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of Crimea, claimed that Russian forces stopped a Ukrainian drone attack using air defence and electronic warfare, downing three of the drones without property damage or casualties.
The biological activity of heparin within species 6–11 is unclear and further supports the idea that the main physiological role of heparin is not anticoagulation. These species do not possess any blood coagulation system similar to that present within the species listed 1–5. The above list also demonstrates how heparin has been highly evolutionarily conserved, with molecules of a similar structure being produced by a broad range of organisms belonging to many different phyla.
Studies have generally found only very weak inhibition of serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake with trimipramine, and the drug has been described by various authors as devoid of monoamine reuptake inhibition. Richelson & Pfenning (1984) found a relatively high Ki for the NET of 510 nM in rat brain synaptosomes and Tatsumi et al. (1997) found a relatively high KD of 149 nM for the SERT in human HEK293 cells, but other authors and a more recent study with an improved design have not had the same findings. In the most recent study, by Haenisch et al. (2011), the researchers suggested that the discrepant findings from the Tatsumi et al. study were due to methodological differences, in particular the use of radioligand binding in isolated membranes (KD) to study interactions as opposed to actual functional reuptake inhibition (IC50).
In early 2008, Carrier acquired Environmental Market Solutions, Inc. (EMSI), an environmental and green building consulting company based in the United States. The company has received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the US Green Building Council for its factories in Charlotte, NC, and Huntington, IN (2009), Shanghai, China (2010), and Monterrey, Mexico (2011). In September 2013, Carrier, Otis, and United Technologies Fire and Security were combined into one subsidiary, UTC Building & Industrial Systems. In 2016, Otis was split off, with the remainder becoming UTC Climate, Controls & Security. In January 2016, Carrier announced it would lay off an unspecified number of employees at its research and development division in the town of DeWitt, New York. In February 2016, Carrier announced it would close its Indianapolis factory and move production to Monterrey, Mexico. HVAC Systems and Services North America president Chris Nelson cited "ongoing cost and pricing pressures" and Carrier's "existing infrastructure and a strong supplier base" in Mexico, saying that the move would allow the company "to operate more cost-effectively." The Carrier spokesperson told the crowd that there would be no immediate impact on jobs, that the move would take place over three years, and no jobs would be affected until mid-2017, with the move to be completed by the end of 2019.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Semax is based on the ACTH(4-10) fragment, a seven-amino-acid segment of adrenocorticotropic hormone. The synthetic peptide retains the core sequence while removing regions associated with endocrine activity. This modification is intended to isolate effects on the nervous system.
It is registered for clinical use in Russia and a few other countries, typically as a nasal drop formulation. It does not hold approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration or the European Medicines Agency. Outside those markets it is generally handled as a research chemical.
The compound was developed in Moscow and the earliest studies were conducted there, so the primary literature is largely in Russian-language journals. Translation and indexing have been incomplete, which limits access for outside researchers. Independent groups have since published some work, but the total volume remains modest.
Solid peptide is best kept frozen at about minus 20 degrees Celsius in a sealed container with desiccant. It should be allowed to reach room temperature before opening to prevent condensation. Repeated warming and cooling of the same vial is discouraged.