Copper peptides: a guide for formulators

Check the INCI name on the specification first. A sheet that reads "Tripeptide-1" describes the peptide without its copper, whatever the colour of the sample.

The copper gives the powder and its solutions a blue colour. On the bench that colour is a useful record, as the formulation notes below explain.

• Cosmetic grade: 100 mg vials, ten to a box. This is the grade for products applied to the skin. GHK-Cu (Copper Tripeptide-1)
• Research grade: 50 mg vials, for laboratories that have signed our end-use declaration. We do not sell it for cosmetic manufacturing.

Both are the pure complex as a dry powder. We do not sell serums, solutions or finished products. Every product is supplied to order and priced in US dollars.

Two sources give use levels. We add none of our own.

• The Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) Expert Panel in the United States assessed Tripeptide-1 with its metal salts and fatty acyl derivatives, a group that includes Copper Tripeptide-1. Its report, published in the International Journal of Toxicology in 2018, recorded typical use concentrations for the group below 10 ppm. The panel concluded that the ingredients are safe in cosmetics in the present practices of use and concentration described in the report.
• The manufacturer's technical data sheet, where the manufacturer issues one, gives its recommended range for the cosmetic grade. It is available on request.

Either figure is a starting point for your own product safety assessment. Neither is a level we recommend.

A use level is written in parts per million (ppm) or as a percentage of the finished product. 1 ppm is 1 mg in every kilogram, or 0.0001%.

The sum works the same way at any level. Take a 20 kg batch at 5 ppm, chosen only to show the arithmetic: 20 kg × 5 mg/kg = 100 mg of Copper Tripeptide-1. If the certificate of analysis gives a peptide content of 92%, divide by 0.92 and weigh 108.7 mg of powder, a little more than one 100 mg cosmetic-grade vial.

A hundred milligrams spreads more evenly through 20 kg if you dissolve it first in a measured part of the formula's water and add that solution in the cool-down phase.

These points come from a supplier's technical data sheet and one published study. Confirm each in your own stability tests.

1. pH. Supplier sheets for GHK-Cu solutions ask for a working pH near neutral; the one we read gives pH 5.0 to 7.0. A preformulation study in Pharmaceutical Development and Technology (2014) found the GHK tripeptide stable in buffers from pH 4.5 to 7.4 for at least two weeks at 60 °C, and less stable under alkaline and oxidative stress.
2. Chelating agents. Disodium EDTA and other ingredients that bind copper compete with the peptide for its copper ion. The same data sheet warns that EDTA can turn a copper peptide solution green, and that carnosine, a dipeptide that also binds copper, can turn it purple. If your base needs a chelator, test that the copper stays on the peptide for the whole stability study.
3. Heat. The data sheet asks for it to go in during the cool-down phase, below 40 °C.
4. Strong acids and pure ascorbic acid. The data sheet lists both as incompatible. Keep them out of the same formula.
5. Colour. The blue reflects the copper's surroundings, and a change of colour on storage usually means those surroundings have changed. Write down the colour at every time point, beside the peptide assay.

From the day the vials arrive, keep them at the storage condition on their label, and note that condition in your batch records.

For Copper Tripeptide-1:

• the manufacturer's certificate of analysis, with every batch: its batch number, dates, test results and the specification they meet (how to read a certificate of analysis);
• the INCI name and CAS number, with the CosIng function, for your formula sheet and ingredient list;
• on request, where the manufacturer issues them: the specification, the safety data sheet, the technical data sheet and the certificate of origin.

If your finished product is imported into Iraq, a certification body asks for papers of the same kind before it issues the Certificate of Conformity that each consignment of cosmetics needs: a product data sheet, the lot number and dates, test reports and a certificate of origin. The full list, with what we could and could not confirm about registering a cosmetic in Iraq, is in importing cosmetics into Iraq.

Claims on a finished copper peptide serum belong to the brand, and the brand holds the evidence for them. Keep them to how skin looks and feels. We have not found Iraq's definition of a cosmetic published where we could read it, so where a claim sits near the line between cosmetic and medicine, your lawyer and the Ministry of Health decide.

A certification body for Iraq's conformity programme, Bureau Veritas, reports that a regulated product's name, warnings, required instructions for use and, where the applicable standard asks for them, its ingredients must appear in Arabic, with the country of origin marked. That is a certifier's summary; the Iraqi standard itself is for your lawyer to confirm.

We make no claims for the ingredient. Cosmetic-grade Copper Tripeptide-1 is supplied only as an ingredient for products applied to the skin.

We supply cosmetic companies, factories, brand owners and distributors in federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Region that show their company registration certificate. We deliver to your business address in Iraq. Prices are in US dollars, and every product is supplied to order. We do not supply individuals.