The tuftsin origin story
Selank did not start as an anxiety drug. Its backbone is tuftsin, an immune peptide discovered at Tufts University in…
From a 1970 immune discovery to a Moscow anxiety peptide
Selank did not start as an anxiety drug. Its backbone is tuftsin, an immune peptide discovered at Tufts University in 1970 that tells white blood cells to engulf invaders. Decades later, Russian scientists saw that this tiny molecule could be re-engineered into something that acts on the brain.
This unit traces that arc: the discovery of tuftsin, why its designers judged native tuftsin too fragile to be a drug, and how the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Moscow, working with the Zakusov Research Institute of Pharmacology, appended a stabilizing tail to create Selank.
Key terms
The discovery of tuftsin
In 1970, scientists at Tufts University described a four-amino-acid peptide cut from antibodies that stimulates every function of phagocytic cells, and named it tuftsin after their university. It was one of the first examples of a tiny peptide fragment carrying a specific, potent biological instruction. The original reports are old enough that none could be retrieved at any route, so the account here rests on a later overview by one of the discoverers and on a more recent paper that restates where and when the discovery happened.
Tuftsin's discovery mattered far beyond immunology. It proved that a fragment cut from a large protein could act as a standalone signaling molecule, an idea that shaped later peptide drug design. Selank is a direct descendant of that insight: keep the useful core, engineer away its weaknesses.
AdvancedHow tuftsin is made in the body
Tuftsin is not synthesized on its own. It is cleaved from the heavy chain of immunoglobulin G by two enzymes in sequence: one in the spleen cuts distal to the arginine end, and a second, on the outer face of the plasma membrane, cuts proximal to the threonine. A rare congenital tuftsin deficiency is linked to frequent severe infection. That biology is why tuftsin is fundamentally an immune molecule.