# About Doctor GHK-Cu — an independent editorial archive of the copper-tripeptide literature > Doctor GHK-Cu is an independent editorial archive of the peer-reviewed research literature on GHK-Cu. Not a clinic. No medical advice. No products sold. What this site is, what it is not, and how each frame is sourced. ## What this site is Doctor GHK-Cu is an independent editorial project that publishes summaries of the peer-reviewed research literature on GHK-Cu, the copper-tripeptide complex first isolated from human plasma by Loren Pickart in the early 1970s. The archive runs from the foundational 1988 Maquart fibroblast paper to the 2025 liposomal-delivery and comprehensive tripeptide reviews — a fifty-year roll of frames, slowly developed. The editorial register is archivist rather than clinician. Each page is summarized from named, dated, citable papers. Each numbered chip in the body links back to the entry on /references. Where the literature is thin, the page says so; where the magnitude claims rest on single-platform microarray data rather than independent replication, the page says that too. The site is small and the topic is narrow; both are deliberate. ## What this site is not We are not a clinic. We do not employ clinicians and we do not provide medical advice. We do not manufacture, sell, or distribute any product. Our work is editorial commentary on publicly available science. The word 'Doctor' in the domain name is editorial framing — a position the publisher occupies relative to the literature, not a claim about the site's services. Read it as 'archivist of record' or 'darkroom curator,' not as treating physician. We have no patients, no consultation service, and no prescription pathway, and we do not recommend that anyone reading this site obtain or use GHK-Cu. Topical Copper Tripeptide-1 is a widely marketed cosmetic ingredient; non-topical and systemic uses of GHK-Cu are not approved by any regulatory authority and remain experimental. This archive describes what the literature has studied — the route, the dose, the model, the outcome. What readers do with that information is their own business, not ours. ## Sourcing and editorial method The archive draws on PubMed, PubMed Central, the original publishers' open-access archives, and a small number of industry-published cosmetic-dermatology sources where the underlying study is identifiable and traceable. Every quantitative claim on the site cites a real paper; every claim that does not is removed or marked as descriptive. Where two papers disagree, both are cited. Where a number is widely circulated but lightly sourced (the '4,000 genes' framing, for instance), the page notes the caveat. We do not interview subjects, run our own assays, or publish primary research. The contribution is curatorial and editorial: the literature is large, scattered across cosmetic and biomedical journals, and dominated by one research group's review papers. Setting it out in chronological frames with dose, species, route, and citation attached is what this site is for. ## Regulatory framing GHK-Cu is recognized as a cosmetic ingredient (INCI: Copper Tripeptide-1) and is widely used in topical skincare in the United States, the European Union, and most other jurisdictions. It is not FDA-approved as a drug for any therapeutic indication. Injectable / systemic GHK-Cu was placed on the FDA 503A interim Category 2 compounding list and removed without progression to Category 1, which means it is not currently eligible for 503A pharmacy compounding. While GHK-Cu is not currently listed by name on the WADA Prohibited List, listings change; athletes should consult current WADA documentation directly. --- An archivist's digest of the published literature — not a clinic, not a vendor, not a prescription.