Selank

Konstantinopolsky MA, Chernyakova IV, Kolik LG

Bulletin of experimental biology and medicine

In an outbred-rat naloxone-precipitated morphine-withdrawal model, intraperitoneal Selank reduced the composite withdrawal-syndrome index and attenuated convulsive and postural signs, with a magnitude of effect approaching the benzodiazepine comparator diazepam, supporting its use as a research tool for studying opioid-withdrawal neuropharmacology.

Kolik LG, Nadorova AV, Antipova TA, Kruglov SV, Kudrin VS, Durnev AD

Bulletin of experimental biology and medicine

In rats given chronic ethanol as their sole fluid source for 30 weeks, researchers found that intraperitoneal Selank prevented ethanol-associated deficits in an object-recognition memory task and normalized the ethanol-induced rise in BDNF content in the hippocampus and frontal cortex, implicating BDNF-related neurotrophic signaling as a candidate mechanism in Selank's studied effects on rodent memory models.

Filatova E, Kasian A, Kolomin T, Rybalkina E, Alieva A, Andreeva L, et al.

Frontiers in pharmacology

Using human IMR-32 neuroblastoma cell culture, researchers profiled 84 GABAergic-neurotransmission-related genes by qPCR and found that Selank alone did not directly alter gene expression, but modulated the transcriptional response to co-administered GABA and enhanced olanzapine's effect on gene expression, suggesting an indirect, receptor-modulatory mechanism rather than direct GABAergic gene regulation.

Volkova A, Shadrina M, Kolomin T, Andreeva L, Limborska S, Myasoedov N, et al.

Frontiers in pharmacology

In rat frontal-cortex tissue, researchers used real-time PCR to profile 84 neurotransmission-related genes 1 and 3 hours after Selank or GABA injection and found overlapping, positively correlated expression changes between the two peptide/neurotransmitter groups, supporting a proposed allosteric-modulation-of-GABAergic-signaling mechanism as a molecular basis for Selank's studied central-nervous-system effects.

Zozulya AA, Kost NV, Yu Sokolov O, Gabaeva MV, Grivennikov IA, Andreeva LN, et al.

Bulletin of experimental biology and medicine

This foundational biochemical mechanism study reported that, in an enzymatic hydrolysis assay, Selank (Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg-Pro-Gly-Pro) dose-dependently inhibited breakdown of plasma enkephalin (IC50 approximately 15 microM), more potently than the reference peptidase inhibitors bacitracin and puromycin. The authors proposed enkephalinase inhibition as a candidate molecular mechanism underlying Selank's studied anxiolytic-type activity, a hypothesis that later gene-expression research (e.g., GABAergic pathway studies) has continued to probe.