About Order GHK-Cu: an independent reading of the literature

What this project is

Order GHK-Cu is an independent editorial project that publishes summaries of the peer-reviewed research literature on GHK-Cu, the copper(II) complex of glycyl-histidyl-lysine. 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 name reads "Order" because of the order of the journey — the sequence in which the evidence accumulated, from Pickart's 1973 isolation of the plasma factor to the 2024 and 2025 reviews. It is not a checkout. Nothing on this site can be purchased here, and the digest points to no vendor. The expedition metaphor is the editorial frame: the literature genuinely is a five-decade trail with datable landmarks, and reading it as a route — waypoint by waypoint, with the river crossings marked — is how this project organizes a body of research that is strong in some places and thin in others.

Why a trail, and why the gaps are marked

GHK-Cu's record rewards an honest map. The topical skin and collagen evidence is well-developed and partly human; the gene-expression data is striking but largely derived from database analysis; the systemic and injectable use has no validated human pharmacokinetics at all. A digest that flattened all of that into one confident voice would misrepresent the science.

So this site marks its river crossings. When the human data runs out, we say so. When a figure is an extrapolation — the often-quoted 4,000-gene number rather than the audited 31.2% statistic — we use the audited figure and note the difference. When a hair-growth result came from a combination formulation rather than pure GHK-Cu, the page says which molecule was tested. That discipline is the point of the project.

What the name does not claim

This domain frames itself editorially. It is not a clinic, a pharmacy, a telehealth service, or a prescriber, and it does not offer treatment, consultation, or any product. There are no doctors, pharmacists, or clinical staff behind this site, and no physical location is implied. Every page describes research findings in study-attributed, third-person terms, using "studied at X in [species or model]" framing rather than any human dosing recommendation. Where a number appears, a citation appears with it, and the full reference list lets any reader check the source directly.