Editorial / About
About GHK-Cu Field Guide
A plain-language field guide to the peer-reviewed copper-peptide literature — what has been measured, and what has not.
What This Site Is
The GHK-Cu Field Guide is a plain-language guide to the peer-reviewed research on GHK-Cu — the copper(II) tripeptide glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine studied across five decades for collagen synthesis, skin repair, hair-follicle stimulation, and gene-expression modulation. It exists to make that literature navigable, not to act on it.
There is no clinic here and no clinician on staff; the guide diagnoses nothing, treats nothing, and offers no medical advice. It makes, stocks, and sells nothing — what it compiles is sourced summaries, not product.
The name 'Field Guide' describes our editorial position relative to the literature — we organize, explain, and cite the published research for a general reader audience that includes skincare researchers, students, and people interested in the biochemistry of aging and tissue repair. 'Field guide' is a publishing metaphor for a reference that helps a non-specialist navigate a technical domain; it is not a claim about clinical services.
Every quantitative claim on this site cites the study that measured it. Where the evidence is strong, we say so. Where it is limited — small trials, rodent-only data, industry-sponsored results, or claims awaiting independent replication — we say that too.
What We Cover and Why
GHK-Cu sits at an unusual intersection: a molecule with more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and a well-characterized mechanism that is also widely discussed in skincare, biohacker, and research-peptide communities — often without accurate citation. 'Copper peptide GHK' returns approximately 110,000 monthly searches; a large share of those queries land on commercial product pages that cite Pickart's research selectively or without context.
This site exists to make the actual research accessible. The literature covers six domains — skin collagen and matrix remodeling, hair follicle biology, gene-expression modulation, lung and gut tissue protection, skeletal muscle, and cognitive aging — and each has its own chapter here, color-coded for navigation. Every claim is cited. Every citation links to PubMed or PMC.
We use a color-coded chapter structure because GHK-Cu's research base is genuinely broad: the same copper tripeptide appears in dermatology journals, pulmonology journals, and aging biology journals, and a reader interested in hair follicles has different navigational needs than one interested in lung fibrosis. Color-as-wayfinding makes the breadth navigable without burying any topic.
For GHK-Cu copper peptide research, copper peptide hair growth studies, and GHK-Cu skin collagen research, the dedicated chapter pages go as deep as the literature currently supports.
Editorial Standards
Every quantitative claim on this site must trace to a citation in the references. We do not write dose recommendations for humans. We describe what was administered to which species at which dose by which route — using 'studied at X mg/kg in [species]' framing throughout.
We document the limitations of the evidence as prominently as the findings. When a study is small (n=7 or n=45), industry-sponsored, or lacks independent replication, we say so. The most cited limitation in the GHK-Cu literature — that Loren Pickart is both the compound's discoverer and the primary author of most key reviews — is acknowledged wherever the Pickart 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018 papers are cited.
We do not link to vendors, product pages, or other portfolio sites. We do not use competitor brand names. We do not make prescriptive recommendations. The site is an editorial reading resource — a structured way into the published literature — and nothing more.
For questions about the content or citations, use the contact page.