What Selank is
Selank is Semax's anxiolytic sibling: a synthetic analog of the immune peptide tuftsin, developed by the same Russian institute and approved in Russia as an intranasal anti-anxiety treatment. The pitch is anxiolysis without sedation or dependence, based on Russian trials against benzodiazepine comparators that have not been replicated in the West.
As with Semax, intranasal is the approved and dominant route, and the intranasal calculator covers that math; injection is the minority pattern.
What we do not know
- Russian approval only, and the same replication problem as Semax: the trial literature sits almost entirely in Russian-language journals.
- The comparison trials are against phenazepam, a benzodiazepine not licensed in most countries, which makes the results hard to place.
- No published human pharmacokinetics for the intranasal route most people use.
Reconstitution math
Concentration is everything: the same 5 mg vial gives a different draw for every amount of bacteriostatic water you add. The table uses the common 2 mL setup for each vial size, which puts every unit on a U-100 insulin syringe at 25 mcg for the default vial. Dashes mark draws too small to measure or larger than the syringe.
| Vial | BAC water | Concentration | 250 mcg | 500 mcg | 750 mcg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 mg | 2 mL | 2.5 mg/mL | 10 u | 20 u | 30 u |
| 10 mg | 2 mL | 5 mg/mL | 5 u | 10 u | 15 u |
Dosing and protocol
Community protocol: 250 to 750 mcg daily, intranasally or subcutaneously, continuous or as-needed for anxious periods.
Community dosing runs 250 to 750 mcg daily. On a 5 mg vial with 2 mL of water, 250 mcg is a 10-unit draw. Some run it continuously, others keep it as-needed for high-stress stretches; the Russian labeling pattern is short courses of two to three weeks.
Pharmacokinetics
No curve is shown, on purpose.
Selank's published kinetics come from Russian animal work showing blood clearance within minutes; no human subcutaneous pharmacokinetics exist. Like Semax, its claimed effects are central and outlast any plasma level, so a curve would be doubly misleading.
How it is thought to work
A synthetic analog of tuftsin, an immunomodulatory peptide fragment, stabilized the same way as Semax. It is described as anxiolytic without sedation, acting on GABAergic and monoamine systems.
What the evidence supports
This table grades how well each outcome has been studied in humans, not how well Selank works. A strong grade means the question was asked properly, and the answer may still have been negative. Nothing here is inherited from a drug class, a close analog, or the parent molecule of a fragment.
| Outcome | Strongest published evidence |
|---|---|
| Generalized anxiety disorder | Human RCT |
| Cognitive and attention measures | Human, observational |
| Independent replication outside Russian literature | No data |
Storage and handling
Lyophilized vials keep best cold, dark, and dry; refrigeration is the community default and freezing lyophilized powder is common for long holds. After reconstitution, refrigerate at 2 to 8 C, do not freeze the solution, and date the vial. Bacteriostatic water's preservative keeps multi-dose use practical for about 28 days by USP convention, though our 120-day stability study found the preservative itself outlasts that window.
Got a certificate of analysis with your vial? Run it through our COA Reader: it reads the report in plain English, checks purity and mass against the label claim, and links the testing lab’s own verification page. Our guide to reading a COA explains what the numbers do and do not tell you.
Sources
- Zozulya et al., Efficacy and mechanisms of Selank in anxiety-phobic disorders, Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr 2008
- Medvedev et al., Selank in generalized anxiety disorder vs phenazepam adjunct, Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr 2015