Research brief · 2026-09-09
What Does Selank Actually Do? What the Research Shows
Selank is a synthetic seven-amino-acid peptide modeled on tuftsin, a naturally occurring immune-signaling peptide. It was developed in Russia, where it is marketed as an anti-anxiety nasal spray, and it is also known by the developmental code name TP-7. It is not approved as a medicine in the United States, the EU or the UK.
The entire human evidence base is three small studies from Russian psychiatric journals, all testing Selank in anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder and neurasthenia. What they share is the design: none compared Selank with a placebo. All three compared it with a benzodiazepine tranquilizer already used for those conditions, either head-to-head or as an add-on.
Medvedev and colleagues, in 2014, compared Selank with phenazepam in 60 patients. The same group in 2015 gave 70 patients either Selank plus phenazepam or phenazepam alone. Zozulia and colleagues, in 2008, compared 30 patients on Selank with 32 on medazepam. Across the three, the reported result was anxiety relief similar to or faster than the benzodiazepine alone, with less of the sedation and memory impairment that come with the comparison drug. None of the three describes a double-blind design, and the combined total is well under 200 patients.
The registry tells its own story. Zero Selank trials are registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. A plain search returns two studies, but both are unrelated brain-stimulation trials that matched on TP-7 and TP-8, which are scalp electrode positions used in EEG research, not the peptide.
The limit is that no placebo-controlled trial exists, so it is not possible to say whether Selank does anything beyond what the comparison drug, patient expectation or the natural course of an anxiety disorder would produce. No study ran longer than a few weeks, and no dose-ranging study has been done. Selank is not approved for human use outside Russia.
Sources
- Medvedev VE et al., A comparison of the anxiolytic effect and tolerability of selank and phenazepam, n=60, not placebo-controlled
- Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii 2014
- Medvedev VE et al., Optimization of the treatment of anxiety disorders with selank, n=70, not blinded
- Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii 2015
- Zozulia AA et al., Efficacy of the peptide anxiolytic selank in generalized anxiety disorders and neurasthenia, n=62, active comparator
- Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii 2008
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