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Gly-His-Lys tripeptide · copper(II) complex
Copper peptide GHK-Cu (glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine copper complex). A naturally occurring tripeptide-copper complex. Supplied as a lyophilized powder for research purposes only.
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Assayed by Janoshik to ≥99% purity — the certificate is included with every order.
Valtrax Research supplies materials strictly for in-vitro laboratory research. They are not drugs, supplements, cosmetics, or medical devices, and are not intended for human or animal use, ingestion, or administration. By ordering, you confirm you are a qualified researcher purchasing for lawful research use, in accordance with all applicable Canadian laws and regulations.
Gly-His-Lys, clamped around a copper(II) ion. Treat the metal as structural, not optional: the histidine imidazole and the backbone nitrogens coordinate the copper into a square-planar complex, and across the literature it is that complex — never the naked tripeptide — that registers activity.
The peptide is endogenous. It runs in human plasma at roughly micromolar levels in youth and tapers with age, and that decline is what first drew researchers to it. The copper it ferries is the thread connecting GHK to the collagen and matrix-remodeling work it is identified with.
The firmest data sit in connective tissue — collagen and glycosaminoglycan synthesis in fibroblast culture, and faster matrix accumulation in rodent wounds. A second line treats GHK as a transcriptional lever, reporting shifts across hundreds of genes weighted toward repair and antioxidant defense. Copper handling underwrites both.
The compound was a side discovery. Pickart, working in the early 1970s on a plasma factor that kept aged liver tissue functional in culture, narrowed the activity to a glycyl-histidyl-lysine fraction and found it bound copper avidly — the metal affinity surfaced from the same line of work. The story then turns to connective tissue.
Maquart anchors that turn: fibroblast culture and rat-wound papers in which the complex lifted collagen and glycosaminoglycan output. Pickart’s later reviews open the aperture onto gene-expression and antioxidant readouts, but the copper-driven matrix account is still the load-bearing column of the literature.
GHK entered the record as a behavior, not a molecule — a plasma fraction that put function back into old tissue in culture. Resolving it to the glycyl-histidyl-lysine tripeptide, and then catching the copper it travels with, is the step that converted that behavior into a defined reagent.
What followed leaned hard on wound and connective-tissue preparations, and GHK-Cu has held its place as the reference copper peptide for that work ever since.
Maquart, F.X. et al. (1988). Stimulation of collagen synthesis in fibroblast cultures by the tripeptide-copper complex glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine-Cu2+.
PubMedMaquart, F.X. et al. (1993). In vivo stimulation of connective tissue accumulation by the tripeptide-copper complex glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine-Cu2+ in rat experimental wounds. J Clin Invest 92(5):2368–2376.
PubMedPickart, L. et al. (2015). GHK Peptide as a Natural Modulator of Multiple Cellular Pathways in Skin Regeneration.
PubMedThird-party tested for purity, identity, quantity.
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