The tuftsin origin story
Selank did not start as an anxiety drug. Its backbone is tuftsin, an immune peptide first described at Tufts…
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 first described at Tufts University in 1970 that stimulates phagocytes, the white blood cells that engulf invaders. Scientists in Moscow later extended this tiny molecule into a peptide with anxiety-reducing activity.
This unit traces that arc: the discovery of tuftsin, why its designers added a tail to improve its metabolic stability, and how the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Moscow, working with the Zakusov Research Institute of Pharmacology, created Selank.
Key terms
The discovery of tuftsin
In 1970, scientists at Tufts University described tuftsin, a four-amino-acid peptide (Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg) released from antibodies that stimulates all functions of phagocytic cells. The striking finding was that so small a fragment was responsible for the full stimulating effect of the antibody it came from. The original reports are not cited here, so the account rests on a 1983 overview of tuftsin and on more recent papers that restate the discovery's year and place.
Tuftsin's discovery showed that a fragment cut from a large protein could act as a signaling molecule on its own. 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 made as a peptide of its own. It is a fragment of the heavy chain of immunoglobulin G, and two enzymes free it: one in the spleen cuts distal to the arginine end, and the other, on the outer side of the plasma membrane, cuts proximal to the threonine. Human mutants with tuftsin deficiency, as the overview calls them, show signs and symptoms of frequent severe infection. That biology is why tuftsin is fundamentally an immune molecule.