This is a working overview of ACTH fragment, written for readers who want more than a one-paragraph summary but less than a textbook.
Reviewed 2026-01-12. Anything still debated is marked as such rather than presented as settled.
Semax is a synthetic heptapeptide whose sequence is Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro. The first four residues correspond to the ACTH(4-10) fragment, while the terminal Pro-Gly-Pro extension was added to improve metabolic stability. Its molecular formula is C37H51N9O10S and its monoisotopic mass is approximately 813.9 Da. The compound is classified as a peptide research chemical and as a registered pharmaceutical product in Russia, but it does not hold marketing approval in the European Union or the United States. Naming conventions vary across supplier catalogs.
Development of the compound took place in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, largely through peptide research groups affiliated with the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute and Moscow State University. Investigators screened fragments of adrenocorticotropic hormone for activity on the central nervous system while attempting to separate cognitive effects from hormonal ones. The shortened sequence was selected because it retained behavioral activity in animal models without stimulating corticosteroid release. Early publications described the molecule as an ACTH(4-10) analog.
Published research on this peptide originates mainly from Russian laboratories, and the wider international literature is comparatively thin. Studies have used rodent models of stroke, hypoxia, and memory tasks, with a smaller number of human trials reported. Reported outcomes include changes in attention and memory measures, along with effects on neurotrophic factor expression in some experiments. Small sample sizes, inconsistent dosing protocols, and limited independent replication are widely noted limitations, so the strength of the clinical evidence remains an open question.
Laboratory descriptions of the material are consistent across suppliers. It appears as a white to off-white lyophilized powder that dissolves readily in water and in polar organic solvents such as dimethyl sulfoxide. Aqueous solutions are clear and colorless at low concentrations. Because the peptide contains methionine, oxidation at the sulfur atom is a recognized degradation pathway, and handling notes usually call for protected, desiccated storage. Reported purity for research-grade lots is generally above 95 percent as measured by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography.
The compound is registered in Russia as a pharmaceutical product, most commonly formulated as a nasal solution, and has been used in that setting since the 1990s. Outside that jurisdiction it is generally handled as a research chemical rather than an approved medicine. Regulatory status therefore differs sharply between countries, and material sold internationally may not correspond to the Russian pharmaceutical formulation. Documentation with commercial samples is typically limited to a certificate of analysis covering purity and identity, not clinical status or local legal classification.
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Molecular formula | C37H51N9O10S | Seven-residue peptide |
| Molecular mass | 813.9 Da | Monoisotopic value |
| Appearance | White to off-white powder | Lyophilized form |
| Solubility | Freely soluble in water | Also soluble in saline and polar solvents |
| Storage (dry) | -20 °C or lower | Desiccated, protected from light |
Laboratory work points toward modulation of neurotrophic signaling, particularly expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and nerve growth factor in hippocampal tissue. Studies also describe effects on monoamine turnover, inflammatory mediators, and oxidative markers. These observations come mainly from animal models and cultured cells, so the causal chain in humans is not firmly established. Whether the reported molecular changes translate into measurable clinical benefit is an open question. Reviews generally present the mechanism as plausible rather than demonstrated.
Clinical evidence consists largely of small trials with modest sample sizes, often without independent replication. Reported endpoints include cognitive scores, recovery after stroke, and visual function, but study designs vary widely and few trials meet contemporary reporting standards. Systematic reviewers have noted a high risk of bias in several of these reports. No large multicenter trial conducted outside Russia has been published. The compound is therefore best described as investigational in most jurisdictions, with its clinical role still unresolved.
Semax is a synthetic heptapeptide with the sequence Met-Glu-His-Phe-Pro-Gly-Pro. Its chain combines the first seven residues of corticotropin with a C-terminal proline-glycine-proline extension, a modification intended to slow enzymatic breakdown. The free peptide has a molecular mass near 813.9 daltons. It belongs to the class of ACTH-derived fragments studied for central nervous system activity rather than for adrenal steroid stimulation. This structural relationship to a natural hormone fragment is the usual starting point for describing the compound in the literature.
The compound was developed during the 1980s at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Moscow as part of research on fragments of adrenocorticotropic hormone. Early work examined short ACTH-derived sequences that retained neurotrophic effects while lacking the endocrine activity of the full hormone. Semax entered clinical use in Russia during the 1990s, where it received registration for several neurological indications. Outside that region it remained primarily a laboratory research material rather than an approved therapeutic. English-language literature on it grew more slowly and frequently cited the original Russian studies.
Terminology around the compound varies by source. It appears in catalogues and papers as Semax, as the heptapeptide ACTH(4-7)-Pro-Gly-Pro, and under various alphanumeric laboratory codes used by individual suppliers. These names refer to the same sequence but may imply different salt forms, purity grades, or counter-ions. Peptide databases usually list the free base mass, while product descriptions sometimes report acetate or trifluoroacetate salts with a different formula weight. Because naming conventions for research peptides are not standardised across vendors, checking the declared sequence and measured mass is more reliable than relying on a trade name alone.
Romergoline (INNTooltip International Nonproprietary Name; developmental code name FCE-23884) is a dopamine receptor modulator of the ergoline family which was under development for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and psychotic disorders but was never marketed. It is closely related to the psychedelic drug LSD in terms of chemical structure, though it is not technically a lysergamide itself as the oxygen atom of LSD's carboxamide moiety has been removed to instead form an aminomethyl moiety.
8 June Observation of the axial Higgs mode, a Higgs boson-like excitation in a charge density wave material, is reported. It was incorrectly reported in some press releases as a dark matter particle. Scientists provide an overview of the capabilities of missions and observatories for detecting various alien technosignatures. 9 June A study estimates the air pollution impacts on climate change and the ozone layer from rocket launches and re-entry of reusable components and debris in 2019 and from a theoretical future space industry extrapolated from the "billionaire space race". It concludes that substantial effects from routine space tourism should "motivate regulation". Researchers report a robotic finger covered in a type of manufactured living human skin. Researchers demonstrate an electronic skin giving biological skin-like haptic sensations and touch/pain-sensitivity to a robotic hand (1 June). A system of an electronic skin and a human-machine interface is reported that can enable remote sensed tactile perception, and wearable or robotic sensing of many hazardous substances and pathogens (1 June). A multilayer tactile sensor hydrogel-based robot skin is demonstrated (8 June). 10 June – The core of the globular cluster NGC 3201 is shown to harbor a sub-cluster of nearly a hundred black holes. The same study also confirms that the globular cluster NGC 6397 has ejected most of its original black hole population, and its inner mass excess is composed by hundreds of massive white dwarfs.
Iron supplementation by mouth commonly causes negative gastrointestinal effects, including constipation, nausea, vomiting, metallic taste to the oral iron and dark colored stools. Constipation is reported by 15–20% of patients taking oral iron therapy. Preparations of iron therapy that take longer to be absorbed by the small intestine (extended release iron therapy) are less likely to cause constipation. It can take six months to one year to get blood levels of iron up to a normal range and provide the body with iron stores. Oral iron replacement may not be effective in cases of iron deficiency due to malabsorption, such as celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, or H. pylori infection; these cases would require treatment of the underlying disease to increase oral absorption or intravenous iron replacement. As iron-deficiency anemia becomes more severe, if the anemia does not respond to oral treatments or if the treated person does not tolerate oral iron supplementation, then other measures may become necessary. Two options are intravenous iron injections and blood transfusion. Intravenous can be for people who do not tolerate oral iron, who are unlikely to respond to oral iron, or who require iron on a long-term basis. For example, people receiving dialysis treatment who are also getting erythropoietin or another erythropoiesis-stimulating agent are given parenteral iron, which helps the body respond to the erythropoietin agents to produce red blood cells.
There are damehoods for actress Imelda Staunton, fashion designer Anya Hindmarch and artist Tracey Emin, while former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is made a Companion of Honour. 15 June – Trooping the Colour, the King's birthday parade, takes place. 16 June – Euro 2024: In their first game of the tournament, England win 1–0 against Serbia. 17 June The actor Sir Ian McKellen is taken to hospital after falling off stage during a performance of Player Kings at London's Noël Coward Theatre. Data shows that the London Stock Exchange has become the most valuable in Europe for the first time since 2022. The BBC's Panorama documentary series shows recordings of instances of abuse at a school for children with special educational needs in Wallasey, Merseyside. 18 June – A review conducted into the first Stephen Lawrence murder investigation concludes that four retired detectives who worked on the case will not face any criminal charges over their actions during the investigation. 19 June Figures show inflation fell to the Bank of England's target of 2% in the year to May 2024, down from 2.3% the previous month, and the first time it has been at 2% since July 2021. A woman who accused a therapist of raping and sexually assaulting her at his clinic in London's Belsize Park in 2016 is awarded £200,000 in damages following a civil case she brought against him, after the Crown Prosecution Service did not pursue the case. Figures show that 880 migrants crossed the English Channel on 18 June, setting a new record for daily crossings.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson's paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term "central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words, the final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids to proteins is irreversible. During the remainder of his career, Crick held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. His later research centred on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. Crick remained in this post until his death in 2004; "he was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" according to Christof Koch.
=== Valve Corporation v. Rothschild === In 2015, Display Technologies LLC, one of several IP-holding companies owned by Leigh Rothschild, sued Valve over patent infringement. While the suit was dismissed by January 2016, Valve shortly followed by acquiring licenses to twenty patents owned across Rothschild's firms. Around 2022, another Rothschild company, Patent Asset Management, began sending Valve demands to buy new licenses to two of the patents Valve already had licensed. Valve filed a lawsuit against the company in 2023 under Washington state's Patent Troll Protection and Consumer Protection Acts. In the months that followed, at least three lawsuits were filed in Texas by Rothschild's companies against Valve accusing Valve of additional patent infringement. Valve argued these suits were retaliatory to their Washington suit, and requested them to be dismissed. In February 2026, a jury found in Valve's favor on all counts.
=== Whole genome sequencing (WGS) === Whole genome sequencing and genomics applications can be used for large-scale alignment and comparative analysis with both bacteria and fungi. WGS can be used to diagnose, identify, or characterize an organism down to the individual base pairs by sequencing the entire genome. WGS can also be used to compare the genomes or average nucleotide identity (ANI) of the shared genes between two strains and can be a robust way to compare genetic relatedness and if often used for investigating organisms involved in foodborne illness and other outbreaks.
== Acceptable levels of consumption == The acceptable daily intake (ADI) value for food additives, including aspartame, is defined as the "amount of a food additive, expressed on a body weight basis, that can be ingested daily over a lifetime without appreciable health risk". The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food (later becoming EFSA) have determined this value is 40 mg/kg of body weight per day for aspartame, while the FDA has set its ADI for aspartame at 50 mg/kg per day – an amount equated to consuming 75 packets of commercial aspartame sweetener per day to be within a safe upper limit. The primary source for exposure to aspartame in the US is diet soft drinks, though it can be consumed in other products, such as pharmaceutical preparations, fruit drinks, and chewing gum among others in smaller quantities. A 12-US-fluid-ounce (350 ml; 12 imp fl oz) can of diet soda contains 0.18 grams (0.0063 oz) of aspartame, and, for a 75-kilogram (165 lb) adult, it takes approximately 21 cans of diet soda daily to consume the 3.7 grams (0.13 oz) of aspartame that would surpass the FDA's 50 mg/kg of body weight ADI of aspartame from diet soda alone. Studies of aspartame consumption in the US, Europe, Australia and other countries have shown that even high levels of intake are well below the ADI for safe consumption.
While no other government actively supported the Boer cause, individuals from several countries volunteered and formed Foreign Volunteer Units. These primarily came from Europe, particularly the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden-Norway. Other countries such as France, Italy, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), and restive areas of the Russian Empire, including Congress Poland and Georgia, also formed smaller volunteer corps. Finns fought in the Scandinavian Corps. Two volunteers, George Henri Anne-Marie Victor de Villebois-Mareuil of France and Yevgeny Maximov of Russia, became veggeneraals (fighting generals) of the South African Republic.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Determining disordered regions from biochemical methods is very costly and time-consuming. Due to the variable nature of IDPs, only certain aspects of their structure can be detected, so that a full characterization requires a large number of different methods and experiments. This further increases the expense of IDP determination. In order to overcome this obstacle, computer-based methods are created for predicting protein structure and function. It is one of the main goals of bioinformatics to derive knowledge by prediction. Predictors for IDP function are also being developed, but mainly use structural information such as linear motif sites. There are different approaches for predicting IDP structure, such as neural networks or matrix calculations, based on different structural and/or biophysical properties. Many computational methods exploit sequence information to predict whether a protein is disordered. Notable examples of such software include IUPRED and Disopred. Different methods may use different definitions of disorder. Meta-predictors show a new concept, combining different primary predictors to create a more competent and exact predictor. Due to the different approaches of predicting disordered proteins, estimating their relative accuracy is fairly difficult. For example, neural networks are often trained on different datasets.
== Habitat and distribution == Psilocybe baeocystis is solitary to cespitose, and scattered to numerous on ground bark, wood chips, peat moss, decaying conifer mulch, occasionally on lawns, pastures, and rarely in coniferous forests. Often found growing under plants like rhododendrons and rose bushes in mulched garden beds, sometimes growing amongst other Psilocybe species such as Psilocybe stuntzii and Psilocybe cyanescens. Psilocybe baeocystis grows from August through December, and rarely as early as the end of June. Psilocybe baeocystis is a hemiboreal mushroom, common throughout the Pacific Northwest.
One person was killed in a Russian missile attack in Sumy Oblast. NATO said it was considering a long term funding package for Ukraine worth 100 billion euros ($107 billion) over five years to "Trump-proof" future military support for Ukraine. The idea was raised by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. During his visit to Kyiv, Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed a 10-year security pact with Ukraine and announced 188 million euros ($203 million) in military aid and another 290 million euros in developmental aid.
Though clinical scientists have existed in the UK National Health Service for ≈60 years, the introduction of formally-trained and accredited consultant-level clinical scientists is relatively new, and was introduced as part of the new Modernizing Scientific Careers framework developed in 2008. Consultant clinical scientists are expected to provide expert scientific and clinical leadership alongside and, at the same level as, medical consultant colleagues. While specialists in healthcare science will follow protocols, procedures and clinical guidelines, consultant clinical scientists will help shape future guidelines and the implementation of new and emerging technologies to help advance patient care. In the United Kingdom, healthcare scientists including clinical scientists may intervene throughout entire care pathways from diagnostic tests to therapeutic treatments and rehabilitation. Although this workforce comprises approximately 5% of the healthcare workforce in the UK, their work underpins 80% of all diagnoses and clinical decisions.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
It is a synthetic peptide of seven amino acids. Its backbone corresponds to a fragment of adrenocorticotropic hormone extended at the carboxyl end. The material is distributed as a lyophilized solid for laboratory use.
The extension was introduced to slow enzymatic breakdown of the peptide in biological systems. Natural ACTH fragments are degraded rapidly by peptidases. Adding the tripeptide was intended to extend the window during which the molecule remains intact.
Most published work consists of animal experiments conducted in a small number of laboratories. Human data are limited in number and size. Whether the observed effects translate into reliable clinical benefit is still unresolved.
It is registered as a pharmaceutical product in Russia, where it is typically supplied as a nasal solution. In most other countries it is not an approved drug and is traded as a research chemical instead. Approval status depends entirely on the jurisdiction involved.