# About Meds GHK-Cu: An Editorial Digest of the Copper Tripeptide-1 Record > About Meds GHK-Cu — an independent editorial project publishing summaries of the peer-reviewed GHK-Cu and Copper Tripeptide-1 research literature. Not a clinic, not a pharmacy, no products sold. What this project is, what it is not, and how the GHK-Cu record is weighed here — an apothecary's reference folio, not a dispensary. ## What this project is Meds GHK-Cu is an independent editorial project that publishes summaries of the peer-reviewed research literature on GHK-Cu — the copper(II) tripeptide whose cosmetic-ingredient name is Copper Tripeptide-1. We are not a clinic. We do not employ clinicians and we do not provide medical advice. We do not manufacture, sell, or distribute any product. Our work is editorial commentary on publicly available science. The 'meds' in the name is an editorial register, not a service. We read GHK-Cu the way a 19th-century materia medica read its specimens: as entries in a reference folio, weighed plate by plate for what the record actually documents. That framing is deliberate — it is the opposite of a storefront. Nothing here is stocked, priced, or for sale, and no page links you to a place to buy the compound. ## Copper Tripeptide-1: the INCI name Copper Tripeptide-1 is the INCI (cosmetic-ingredient) name for GHK-Cu — the same molecule this entire site documents, labeled the way you would find it on a skincare panel [3]. We use 'GHK-Cu' for the research literature and 'Copper Tripeptide-1' where the cosmetic-ingredient framing is what the source intends. Keeping the two names tied together is part of the editorial job: a reader searching one should land on the other. The distinction we guard most carefully is GHK versus GHK-Cu. GHK is the free tripeptide; GHK-Cu is its copper chelate, and copper coordination is required for most documented activity [6]. Much of the literature uses the free peptide, so we flag the form a study used wherever it changes how the result should be read. ## How we weigh a study Every quantitative claim on this site maps to a numbered citation that resolves to a real PubMed or PMC record. We lead with the finding and attribute after it. We separate what was measured in cell culture from what was measured in rodents and what was measured in humans, and we never let a topical result stand in for an injectable claim or an animal result stand in for a human one. We also state the gaps plainly. GHK-Cu has strong preclinical and topical-cosmetic data and thin controlled-human evidence: no validated human pharmacokinetics, small human trial sizes, and one human hair trial that tested a combination formulation rather than pure GHK-Cu [4]. A large share of the foundational literature originates from a single investigator and colleagues, so independent replication of the broader gene-expression and anti-aging claims is still limited [2]. An honest digest surfaces that, rather than burying it. ## What you will not find here You will not find dosing instructions, a clinic, a consultation, a prescription, or a product. GHK-Cu has no FDA- or EMA-approved therapeutic indication by any route; topical Copper Tripeptide-1 is a legal cosmetic ingredient, while injectable or systemic use is unapproved and research-only [3]. Where community dosing protocols exist, we note that they have no peer-reviewed human basis — we do not reproduce them as guidance [6]. What you will find is a sourced, weighable reading of the GHK-Cu record: the skin work, the hair work, the mechanism, the safety register, and the honest edges of each. That is the whole remit. --- An apothecary's folio of the GHK-Cu copper-tripeptide literature — each collagen assay, hair-count delta and stability constant set out as an engraved plate and weighed against its source, with no dispensary behind the counter and nothing here to dispense.