Used medically for wound healing
Copper Chelation and Delivery At the most fundamental level, GHK functions as a copper chelator and delivery system - the tripeptide binds Cu with exceptionally high affinity (binding constant approximately 10 M, among the highest known for biological copper chelators), forming a square planar coordination complex where the copper ion is coordinated by the nitrogen atoms of the terminal amino group, the two peptide bonds, and the imidazole nitrogen of histidine
But it is also important for even common and everyday drugs, like ibuprofen, which can become caustic to the stomach or intestines if they are taken without food or allowed to sit in the stomach when not diluted
Loren Pickart, who identified GHK in 1973, published gene-expression analyses suggesting GHK modulates a large number of human genes
Published on December 17th, 2025
In September 2023, the FDA did update the semaglutide label to add ileus (a severe intestinal blockage) as a warning, demonstrating that the agency does act on emerging safety signals when the evidence supports it