Cosmetic & Skin
GHK-Cu
Also published as Copper tripeptide-1, Gly-His-Lys copper complex
A naturally occurring tripeptide that binds copper with high affinity. It is the best evidenced compound in this catalogue for topical cosmetic use and appears in commercial skincare formulations worldwide.
Where it came from
Isolated from human plasma by Loren Pickart in 1973, initially as a factor that made old liver tissue behave like young liver tissue in culture. Plasma levels decline with age.
What the literature examines
- Collagen, elastin and decorin synthesis in fibroblast culture
- Dermal wound closure and scar quality in animal and human studies
- Hair follicle size and dermal papilla activity
- Broad gene expression modulation in human fibroblasts
- Copper transport and metalloproteinase regulation
State of the evidence
Human data exists and is reasonably strong for topical cosmetic endpoints. Injectable use has essentially no controlled human evidence.
What a buyer should know
Copper is the active part of this molecule and copper is not benign at volume. The cosmetic evidence base is topical, at low concentration, applied to skin. It does not support any other route, and free copper load is the reason.
Handling and stability
Distinctive deep blue powder and solution. The colour comes from the copper complex, so a colourless GHK-Cu is a red flag worth raising with your supplier. Light sensitive.
Sequence
Gly-His-Lys, complexed with Cu(II)
Read it yourself
We do not publish a curated citation list, because a hand picked list of papers is a sales tool. These links run a live query against the public databases, so you see everything, including the results that do not suit us.
Supplied for laboratory research use only. Nothing on this page is a dose, a protocol or a claim of effect in humans, and nothing here is medical advice. Read our research use policy.