Trinity compound research profile
Selank
A synthetic tuftsin-related peptide studied in anxiety, stress-response, cognitive, and neuroimmune research.
Research overview
Selank is a synthetic peptide related to the naturally occurring immunomodulatory peptide tuftsin. It has been studied in stress-response, anxiety-related, cognitive, and neuroimmune research.
Trinity’s research pages distinguish mechanistic, animal, and human findings so that preliminary signals are not presented as established clinical conclusions.
Human evidence summary
There was one real clinical trial with 62 people who had generalized anxiety disorder or nervous exhaustion. Half got Selank and half got a standard anti-anxiety drug called medazepam. Selank worked about as well as the drug at reducing anxiety, based on standard psychiatric rating scales, and people also reported feeling less tired and mentally sharper (Zozulya et al. 2008). A second trial looked at how to best use Selank for anxiety treatment (Medvedev et al. 2015), and a brain-scanning (fMRI) study looked at how Selank and a related peptide called Semax affect brain connections (Dokl Biol Sci 2020). The catch: all of these studies were small, done in Russia by the same research circles, and have never been repeated by independent scientists elsewhere in the world.
Preclinical evidence summary
Animal studies (mostly rodents) back up the anxiety-reducing effect and show Selank does block the enzyme that breaks down the calming brain chemical mentioned above. These early animal studies are part of why scientists became interested in testing it in people in the first place.
Source material
Use the linked publications and records to evaluate study design, population, limitations, and relevance.