Copper-Peptides for Tissue Regeneration

GHK-Cu emerged during my attempts to reverse certain changes that occur during human ageing. The goal was to suppress the synthesis of the blood fibrinogen, a protein that rises with age and rises even more after myocardial infraction. Its blood concentration is an excellent predictor of mortality. Elevated fibrinogen levels increase blood coagulation and decrease tissue perfusion, by increasing the thixotropic properties of blood in the microcirculation. I found that the albumin fraction of human blood plasma has a suppressive action on fibrinogen synthesis and also improved the survival of the cultured liver cells that produce fibrinogen. Further isolations found these activities concentrated in a low molecular weight fraction that contained GHK-Cu.1 Subsequent work defined the three dimensional solution structure of GHK-Cu and the binding affinities between GHK and copper (II), as shown in Figure 1.2