← All compounds · evidence tier first, by design
| Use | E1 | E2 | E3 | E4 | E5 | E6 | E7 | E8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E4 Recovery after ischaemic stroke | E4 | |||||||
| E6 Cognitive enhancement (memory, attention, focus) | E6 | |||||||
| E6 Anxiety | E6 |
Semax
MEHFPGP
Heptapeptide: the ACTH(4-7) fragment Met-Glu-His-Phe extended with Pro-Gly-Pro at the C-terminus. It has no corticotropic (adrenal-stimulating) activity attributed to it in the literature cited.
Also: ACTH(4-7)PGP, ACTH(4-10) analogue Semax, Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro
A synthetic seven-amino-acid peptide built from a fragment of the hormone ACTH with a Pro-Gly-Pro tail added for stability. It was developed in Russia, where most of its clinical literature was published. It is sold online elsewhere as a research chemical with claims of improving cognition and focus and of protecting the brain after stroke. No approved medicine contains it in any jurisdiction checked for this record.
- US C gray market
- EU C gray market
- UK ? not verified
- CA C gray market
- AU ? not verified
- JP ? not verified
- CN ? not verified
01Regulatory status, by jurisdiction
| Jurisdiction | Status | Detail and primary source |
|---|---|---|
| US | Not approved | No FDA-approved application: openFDA Drugs@FDA returns no application with a semax active ingredient (query: products.active_ingredients.name:SEMAX*). openFDA states its data are unvalidated.“No matches found!”openFDA Drugs@FDA API (FDA) · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| US | Not approved | Semax (heptapeptide) appears on FDA's list of bulk drug substances previously in Category 2 (significant safety risks) of the compounding interim policy whose nominations were withdrawn by the nominators. FDA's safety statement remains on the page.“Compounded drugs containing semax (heptapeptide) may pose risk for immunogenicity for certain routes of administration due to the potential for aggregation and peptide-related impurities. FDA has no, or limited, safety-related information for proposed routes of administration.”Certain Bulk Drug Substances for Use in Compounding that May Present Significant Safety Risks (content current as of 04/22/2026) · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| EU | Not approved | No product containing semax appears in EMA's downloadable medicines dataset (generated 10 Oct 2026), which covers centrally authorised medicines, refusals and withdrawn applications. National authorisations were not checked individually.“This includes information on marketing authorisations of centrally authorised medicines and post-authorisation procedures.”Download medicine data | European Medicines Agency (EMA) · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| CA | Not approved | Queries of Health Canada's Drug Product Database API for the active ingredient and brand name semax returned no products on the retrieval date.“Search by drug identification number”Drug Product Database online query · retrieved 2026-10-10 |
| UK AU JP CN | Not yet verified from a primary source. No status is shown rather than an unsourced one. | |
02What the human evidence shows
Recovery after ischaemic stroke
n/c: not counted here; see the cited review.
Two Russian clinical reports in people with ischaemic stroke compared semax added to standard care with standard care alone: a 1997 study of 30 treated patients against 80 controls, and a 2018 study of 110 patients divided by rehabilitation timing and semax use. Both reported faster recovery of neurological or motor function and, in 2018, higher blood BDNF levels. Neither abstract describes randomisation or blinding, and the 1997 control group was not concurrent-randomised, so these are counted as non-randomised human data. No placebo-controlled trial with a functional outcome was identified.
- [1] Faster regression of neurological deficits reported in 30 patients with acute ischaemic stroke given semax with standard therapy than in 80 patients on standard therapy
- [2] Higher plasma BDNF and better Barthel index scores reported in post-stroke patients given semax than in those not given it during rehabilitation
Registered-study counts: ClinicalTrials.gov intervention search “semax”, fetched 2026-10-10. Registered studies include trials of other uses; the gap between registered and reported is itself a finding.
Cognitive enhancement (memory, attention, focus)
No human trial of any design has been published for this use.
Effects on learning and memory have been reported in rats, including counteracting heavy-metal-induced impairment of avoidance learning and altering spatial memory after prefrontal ischaemic lesions. No human trial measuring memory, attention or other cognitive performance was identified. One small placebo-controlled brain-imaging study in 24 healthy volunteers found a change in a resting-state brain network minutes after intranasal semax; it did not test cognitive performance and is not counted as an efficacy trial.
- [3] Counteracted heavy-metal-induced inhibition of avoidance conditioning in rats
- [4] Effects on spatial memory formation in rats with prefrontal ischaemic lesions
- [5] Larger rostral default-mode-network component on resting-state fMRI in healthy volunteers after semax than after placebo; no cognitive outcome measured
Registered-study counts: ClinicalTrials.gov intervention search “semax”, fetched 2026-10-10. Registered studies include trials of other uses; the gap between registered and reported is itself a finding.
Anxiety
No human trial of any design has been published for this use.
Anxiety-related findings are from rodents: in adolescent rats exposed to neonatal maternal deprivation, semax given in early life normalised measures of anxiety-like behaviour. No human study of semax for anxiety was identified.
- [6] Normalised anxiety-like behaviour in adolescent rats exposed to neonatal maternal deprivation
Registered-study counts: ClinicalTrials.gov intervention search “semax”, fetched 2026-10-10. Registered studies include trials of other uses; the gap between registered and reported is itself a finding.
03Safety signals
There are no adequate human safety data. The absence of reported harm is not evidence of safety.
04What is unknown
- Sport status is not given: semax is not named on the 2026 WADA Prohibited List, and whether class S0 applies depends on whether any governmental health authority has approved it, which this record did not verify from a regulator source outside the tracked jurisdictions
- No randomised, blinded trial of semax in stroke with a functional outcome was identified
- No human trial of cognitive performance in healthy people was identified
- No systematic human safety data were identified; FDA states it has no, or limited, safety-related information for proposed routes and raises immunogenicity concerns
- Human pharmacokinetics after intranasal or injected use of non-pharmaceutical material are not characterised in the sources reviewed
- Status in the UK, Australia, Japan and China was not verified from regulator sources for this record
05Product quality
No independent purity results have been published for this compound yet. The purity programme will publish full methods and vendor-named results, passes and failures, once its protocol has had legal review.
06Citations
- [Effectiveness of semax in acute period of hemispheric ischemic stroke (a clinical and electrophysiological study)]. (1997). PMID 11517472
- The efficacy of semax in the tretament of patients at different stages of ischemic stroke (2018). doi:10.17116/jnevro20181183261-68
- Semax prevents learning and memory inhibition by heavy metals (2016). doi:10.1134/S0012496616030066
- Formation of Spatial Memory in Rats with Ischemic Lesions to the Prefrontal Cortex; Effects of a Synthetic Analog of ACTH(4-7) (2009). doi:10.1007/s11055-009-9197-4
- Effects of Semax on the Default Mode Network of the Brain (2018). doi:10.1007/s10517-018-4234-3
- Semax Attenuates the Influence of Neonatal Maternal Deprivation on the Behavior of Adolescent White Rats (2012). doi:10.1007/s10517-012-1574-2
Every DOI is resolved against Crossref and every NCT number against ClinicalTrials.gov, title for title, before publication. Regulatory sources are cited inline above with a verbatim quote and retrieval date.
07Mechanism
Semax is a fragment-based analogue of ACTH; in rats it increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels and altered expression of neurotrophin and immune-related genes in the brain.
Mechanism is placed last on purpose: a plausible mechanism is not evidence that a compound works in people.
Reviewed by OSMF research team (AI-assisted, source-verified) on 2026-10-10. Found an error? It goes in the corrections log: report it.