The first time you start looking into peptides, you may wonder if everyone else received a glossary you somehow missed.
BPC-157. TB-500. GHK-Cu. MOTS-C. CJC-1295. Ipamorelin. Semax. Epitalon.
Welcome to peptide alphabet soup.
The names sound complicated, but the questions people are asking about them usually aren’t. Could this help my skin? Could I recover better? Is there something for the aches that seem to hang around longer than they used to? What about energy, metabolism, focus or aging?
Those are much easier conversations to have.
We’ve already talked in The Well House about what peptides are and why two things called peptides can have very different amounts of research behind them. So we’re not going back to chemistry class today.
Instead, imagine we’re looking at the menu together and you keep pointing at things asking, Okay, what does that one mean?
Let’s translate.
GHK-Cu: “Is This the Skin One?”
Pretty much.
GHK-Cu is a naturally occurring peptide that binds copper, which explains the “Cu” in the name. It has attracted attention because of research involving processes such as wound healing, tissue remodeling and collagen (Pickart & Margolina, 2018).
But that’s probably not what you were asking.
You were asking: Could it help my skin look better?
That’s why people are interested in it.
If you’ve noticed that your skin looks thinner, isn’t as firm as it used to be, seems a little crepey or has acquired some lines you don’t remember inviting, GHK-Cu is one of the names you’re likely to encounter when you start exploring peptides and skin aging.
You’ll also find GHK-Cu in topical skincare products, which makes sense given the interest in skin and collagen. Injectable GHK-Cu is a different conversation and comes with different evidence and safety considerations. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has identified potential safety concerns with compounded injectable GHK-Cu and notes that human safety information is limited (U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA], 2024).
The important translation is this: when you hear GHK-Cu, think skin, collagen and tissue repair.
Not “guaranteed wrinkle eraser.” Not “turn back the clock.”
Just: Ah, this is the one people are talking about for skin.
See? We’re already getting somewhere.
BPC-157: “Is This the Recovery One?”
If you’ve spent any time looking at peptides for recovery, you’ve probably met BPC-157.
This is the name that tends to come up when someone has a shoulder that keeps complaining, a knee that has become increasingly opinionated or a workout that seems to follow them around considerably longer than it did ten years ago.
In plain English, people are interested in BPC-157 because of research around healing and tissue repair.
The excitement has come largely from laboratory and animal research involving tissues such as tendons, ligaments, muscles and the gastrointestinal tract. Human research is much more limited, which is important because an interesting result in an animal doesn’t automatically tell us what will happen in your shoulder (Sikiric et al., 2018). The FDA has also identified BPC-157 as a substance that may present significant safety risks in compounding and notes that available information is insufficient to determine whether it would cause harm when administered to humans (FDA, 2024).
But now you understand why people keep talking about it.
When you hear BPC-157, think recovery and repair.
And if your next question is, Recovery from what?—good. That’s exactly where a useful conversation with a clinician should begin.
TB-500: “Wait, Isn’t This Another Recovery One?”
Yes.
And this is where the alphabet soup starts getting annoying because you may reasonably wonder why we need two names for what sounds like the same conversation.
TB-500 is related to thymosin beta-4, a naturally occurring peptide involved in biological processes that have made it interesting to researchers studying tissue repair, cell movement and blood-vessel formation (Goldstein et al., 2012).
The wellness translation is again recovery and tissue repair.
That doesn’t make TB-500 identical to BPC-157. They’re different substances with different biology. But from the reader’s side of the table, they’re often encountered because someone is looking for help with recovery.
So don’t worry about memorizing the molecular differences today.
TB-500 = another name you’re likely to hear in the recovery conversation.
We’ll come back to why people sometimes put these names together. That’s another bowl of soup entirely.
MOTS-C: “Is This the Energy One?”
Now we’re moving away from skin and aching shoulders.
MOTS-C is particularly interesting because it is a mitochondrial-derived peptide. Mitochondria are involved in how our cells produce and manage energy, which is one reason MOTS-C has attracted attention in research involving metabolism, insulin sensitivity, exercise and aging (Lee et al., 2015; Reynolds et al., 2021).
The questions that bring people here sound more like: What is happening with my energy? What about my metabolism? Could this affect how my body handles glucose? Is there anything interesting happening here for healthy aging?
That’s the neighborhood.
When you hear MOTS-C, think cellular energy and metabolism.
This is also a good example of why we’re learning the language without turning every interesting scientific finding into a promise. MOTS-C is an active area of research, but the clinical evidence for many of the wellness and longevity uses you may hear about remains limited.
Still, now when someone mentions MOTS-C, you don’t have to smile and pretend you know whether they’re talking about a peptide or a new electric car.
Energy. Metabolism. Got it.
CJC-1295: “Now We’re Talking About Growth Hormone?”
Yes.
CJC-1295 enters a different part of the peptide conversation because it acts on signaling involved in the body’s release of growth hormone. Human research has demonstrated that CJC-1295 can produce sustained increases in growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1 (Teichman et al., 2006).
And the words growth hormone tend to make people’s ears perk up.
That’s understandable. Growth hormone is involved in growth earlier in life and continues to have roles in metabolism and body composition in adulthood. Interest in growth-hormone pathways is one reason peptides in this category get discussed around recovery, muscle, body composition and aging.
In everyday language, CJC-1295 belongs in the growth-hormone signaling file.
That doesn’t mean “take this and grow muscle.” It means we’re now talking about a peptide designed to influence signals that tell the body to release growth hormone.
That distinction matters—and it’s enough for today.
Ipamorelin: “Didn’t We Just Do the Growth-Hormone One?”
We did.
You are paying attention.
Ipamorelin also stimulates growth-hormone release, but it works through a different receptor pathway than CJC-1295. That’s why you may hear both names when people start talking about peptides and growth-hormone signaling. Research has characterized ipamorelin as a selective growth-hormone secretagogue (Raun et al., 1998).
For our purposes, put Ipamorelin in the same general folder:
growth-hormone release, recovery and body-composition interest.
You don’t need to memorize the receptors.
If you eventually consider a therapy involving one of these peptides, then we can get more specific about what it does, what evidence supports the proposed use, what the risks are and why a clinician might—or might not—think it makes sense for you.
Today we’re learning to read the menu, not opening the restaurant.
Semax: “Is This the Brain One?”
Now the alphabet soup takes us somewhere completely different.
Semax was developed and studied outside the United States and has attracted research interest involving the nervous system and neurological function (Ashmarin et al., 1997). In wellness and peptide conversations, you’re likely to hear it mentioned around focus, cognition and brain health.
That’s the plain-English translation.
If someone starts talking about Semax and you’re wondering whether this is another skin or recovery peptide, it isn’t. You’re now in the brain and cognition conversation.
The important caveat is that some of the enthusiasm you’ll encounter goes further than the clinical evidence available for the broad wellness claims being made, particularly in the United States.
Interesting? Yes.
Permission to promise everybody a sharper brain? No.
Epitalon: “Is This the Longevity One?”
If the conversation has moved into living longer, biological aging or cellular aging, Epitalon may show up.
It has been studied in relation to aging biology, including interest around telomerase activity and telomere-related mechanisms (Khavinson et al., 2003). Those subjects naturally make it attractive in the longevity world because anything involving cellular aging can travel from a research paper to “anti-aging” language remarkably quickly.
So let’s translate without getting ahead of ourselves.
When you hear Epitalon, think longevity and aging research.
Not “proven to make you live longer.”
That’s a very different statement.
This is one of the places where curiosity is warranted and patience is useful. Aging research is moving quickly, and part of what makes The Well House interesting is that we can follow where the science goes without pretending it has already arrived.
You Do Not Need to Memorize Any of This
If you made it through eight peptide names, congratulations. There will be no quiz.
What I want you to have is a rough translation.
GHK-Cu? Skin and collagen.
BPC-157? Recovery and repair.
TB-500? Also recovery and tissue repair.
MOTS-C? Cellular energy and metabolism.
CJC-1295? Growth-hormone signaling.
Ipamorelin? Growth-hormone release.
Semax? Brain and cognition.
Epitalon? Longevity research.
That’s enough to help you enter the conversation without feeling as though everyone is speaking another language.
From there, we get more specific. What are you actually hoping to change? What do we know about that particular peptide in humans? How strong is the evidence for the result you’re interested in? What are the potential risks? How is it given? And does exploring it make sense for you?
Those questions are far more important than being able to spell BPC-157 without looking it up.
And just when you thought we’d finished translating the alphabet, someone is going to take two or three of these names and put them together.
That’s called a peptide stack.
Why combine them? Does putting peptides together make them work better? What exactly are names like Glow and Wolverine supposed to mean? And does combining two interesting peptides give us twice the benefit—or just twice as much to understand?
We’ll save that bowl for next time.
Because apparently alphabet soup also comes with combinations.
References
Ashmarin, I. P., Nezavibatko, V. N., Myasoedov, N. F., Kamensky, A. A., Grivennikov, I. A., Ponomareva-Stepnaya, M. A., Andreeva, L. A., Kaplan, A. Y., Koshelev, V. B., & Riasina, T. V. (1997). A nootropic adrenocorticotropin analogue 4–10 Semax (15 years experience in its design and study). Journal of Basic and Clinical Physiology and Pharmacology, 8(1–2), 3–24.
Goldstein, A. L., Hannappel, E., & Kleinman, H. K. (2012). Thymosin β4: Actin-sequestering protein moonlights to repair injured tissues. Trends in Molecular Medicine, 18(8), 421–429.
Khavinson, V. K., Bondarev, I. E., Butyugov, A. A., & Smirnova, T. D. (2003). Peptide promotes overcoming of the division limit in human somatic cell. Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 135(6), 590–592.
Lee, C., Zeng, J., Drew, B. G., Sallam, T., Martin-Montalvo, A., Wan, J., Kim, S.-J., Mehta, H., Hevener, A. L., de Cabo, R., & Cohen, P. (2015). The mitochondrial-derived peptide MOTS-c promotes metabolic homeostasis and reduces obesity and insulin resistance. Cell Metabolism, 21(3), 443–454.
Pickart, L., & Margolina, A. (2018). Regenerative and protective actions of the GHK-Cu peptide in the light of the new gene data. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 19(7), 1987.
Raun, K., Hansen, B. S., Johansen, N. L., Thøgersen, H., Madsen, K., Ankersen, M., & Andersen, P. H. (1998). Ipamorelin, the first selective growth hormone secretagogue. European Journal of Endocrinology, 139(5), 552–561.
Reynolds, J. C., Lai, R. W., Woodhead, J. S. T., Joly, J. H., Mitchell, C. J., Cameron-Smith, D., Lu, R., Cohen, P., Graham, N. A., Benayoun, B. A., Merry, T. L., & Lee, C. (2021). MOTS-c is an exercise-induced mitochondrial-encoded regulator of age-dependent physical decline and muscle homeostasis. Nature Communications, 12, 470.
Sikiric, P., Seiwerth, S., Rucman, R., Kolenc, D., Vuletic, L. B., Drmic, D., Grgic, T., Strbe, S., Zukanovic, G., Crvenkovic, D., Madzar, Z., Rukavina, I., Sucic, M., Barisic, I., Staroveski, M., Gjurasin, M., & Stupnisek, M. (2018). Brain-gut axis and pentadecapeptide BPC 157: Theoretical and practical implications. Current Neuropharmacology, 16(6), 857–865.
Teichman, S. L., Neale, A., Lawrence, B., Gagnon, C., Castaigne, J.-P., & Frohman, L. A. (2006). Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of growth hormone-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 91(3), 799–805.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2024). Certain bulk drug substances for use in compounding that may present significant safety risks.
Sources reviewed: August 17, 2026.