Semax: doses reported in published research

Sources checked 2026-10-07 · 3 cited studies (1 human, 2 animal, 0 cell culture)

Semax (Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro) is a synthetic analog of the ACTH(4-10) fragment developed in Russia. Human data come from small Russian clinical studies; animal data mainly from rat brain ischaemia models.

Human data: one small Russian clinical study in acute ischaemic stroke (30 treated, 80 controls; 1997). Other Russian clinical reports do not state amounts in their abstracts.

Studies in people (1)

Human 30 adults in the acute period of ischaemic stroke (80 controls on conventional care), non-randomized comparison

Dose as reported: 12 mg per day (moderate stroke) or 18 mg per day (severe stroke)
Route: Not stated in the abstract
Frequency / duration: Courses of 5 and 10 days

Source wording: daily doses were 12 mg for patients with strokes of moderate severity and 18 mg for patients with severe strokes (treatment course--5 and 10 days) was studied in 30 patients in acute period of hemispherical ischemic stroke. Control group consisted of 80 patients

Gusev EI, Skvortsova VI, Miasoedov NF et al.. [Effectiveness of semax in acute period of hemispheric ischemic stroke (a clinical and electrophysiological study)]. Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova 1997. PubMed PMID 11517472 ↗

Animal studies (2)

Animal doses are listed exactly as the studies report them. They are not converted to human amounts here; doses do not translate between species by body weight.

Animal Rats (basal forebrain BDNF levels)

Dose as reported: 50 or 250 µg/kg
Route: Intranasal
Frequency / duration: Single dose; measured after 3 h

Source wording: Semax applied intranasally at 50 and 250 microg/kg bodyweight resulted in a rapid increase in BDNF levels after 3 h

Dolotov OV, Karpenko EA, Seredenina TS et al.. Semax, an analogue of adrenocorticotropin (4-10), binds specifically and increases levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor protein in rat basal forebrain. J Neurochem 2006. PubMed PMID 16635254 ↗

Animal Rats (permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion)

Dose as reported: 100 µg/kg
Route: Intraperitoneal
Frequency / duration: 15 min, 1 h, 4 h and 8 h after occlusion

Source wording: ischemia + Semax animals were given intraperitoneal injections of Semax (100 μg/kg) The injections of Semax or saline were performed 15 min, 1, 4 and 8 h after pMCAO.

Medvedeva EV, Dmitrieva VG, Povarova OV et al.. The peptide semax affects the expression of genes related to the immune and vascular systems in rat brain focal ischemia: genome-wide transcriptional analysis. BMC Genomics 2014. PubMed PMID 24661604 ↗ · full text PMC3987924 ↗

Half-life

No half-life value was found in the sources reviewed for this page.

About this page

Every figure above is copied from the cited source; the source wording is shown with each entry. Where a source does not state something, the page says so.
Only abstracts, open-access full texts, registry records and FDA labels were used, so details found only in a paywalled full text may be missing.
This page does not convert doses between species or into other measures, and gives no preparation or handling information.