Palmitoyl tripeptide-1

The same GHK tripeptide as in the copper peptide, but with a fatty acid attached and no copper. The label name is Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1. The older label name, palmitoyl oligopeptide, was withdrawn because it was vague and ambiguously covered two different ingredients.

Sold as

Applied to the skin (cream, serum, eye products)

Legal status in the EU

A cosmetic ingredient under EU Regulation 1223/2009 with no approval needed before sale; the review panel judged it safe in 2014 at typical levels under 10 ppm. Article 20 and the annex to Regulation 655/2013 also mean a claim about a single ingredient may not imply the finished product has the same property when it does not — a common slip in the marketing of peptide serums.

The GHK sequence is, according to the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel, a fragment of type I collagen, and the ingredient is classed in regulatory terms as a skin conditioning agent. The fatty acid group makes the molecule more oil-soluble so it can cross the outer layer of skin. The panel gives a molecular weight of 578.80, and PubChem confirms the formula C30H54N6O5.

Part of the bodyWhat happensHow it is knownKind of evidence

The skin where you put it

Very little that a person would notice. Across the human tests on record it sat on skin without stinging it or setting off an allergy, at amounts far higher than any product on sale contains. Some testers did show faint to moderate redness during the repeated-patch stage, which the testing laboratory judged temporary and not clinically important.

Measured in people twice, in reports the raw-material suppliers submitted to the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel and which were never published. One was a single patch left on the back of 10 adults for 48 hours, using a trade material containing 1,000 parts per million of the peptide: irritation score 0, described as very well tolerated. The other was a repeated insult patch test in 52 people aged 16 to 79 — a test that puts the same material on the same patch of skin nine times over three weeks, rests for a fortnight, then applies it once more to see whether the skin has learned to react. Reactions ranging from barely perceptible to moderate appeared during the repeat stage or the final one, and the conclusion was no clinically significant potential for irritation or for allergy.

Measured in people

Source [01]

Fine lines around the eyes

This is the whole reason the ingredient exists, and it has been tested by itself exactly once. In that test the wrinkles around the eye came out shorter, shallower and on less rough skin after four weeks than on the side given the same cream without the peptide. Nobody outside the company that sells it has ever repeated the test.

Measured in 15 women aged 44 to 59 over 4 weeks, with a cream containing 3 parts per million applied around the eyes twice a day against a dummy cream, and moulds of the skin taken on day 0 and day 28 and read by an image analyser. Neither the women nor the person scoring knew which cream was which. The report exists only as an article in a trade magazine by a scientist working for Sederma, the company selling the raw material, and as the summary of it the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel published in 2014. A 2025 review of GHK peptides for skin searched the published literature and reported that it found no cellular or clinical studies of the anti-wrinkle properties of this palmitoylated form at all.

One small study

Source [01]Source [05]

How thick the skin is

Skin gets thinner with age. In the one test that measured it, the patch of skin treated with the peptide for four weeks was about 4 per cent thicker than the patch treated with the cream base alone.

Measured in 23 healthy women over 4 weeks, using 4 parts per million in a cream base against the base on its own, with thickness read by ultrasound — a scanner that bounces sound off the layers under the surface. The increase was small but statistically real. The authors put it in context by noting that ageing skin thins at roughly 6 per cent every 10 years. Both authors worked for the company selling the ingredient.

One small study

Source [01]Source [06]

The rest of the body, if any of it got in

Nothing lasting, as far as anyone can tell. The three-amino-acid part of the molecule is taken apart in blood within minutes by the enzymes that chew up short peptides, so there is nothing left to travel anywhere.

Measured in animals, not in people, and by injection rather than on skin. Male rats given the bare tripeptide into a vein at 10 mg per kilogram had it broken down almost at once into a two-amino-acid fragment, which itself cleared from the blood within minutes. It has separately been reported to be unstable in human blood plasma for the same reason. Nobody has measured whether any of the palmitoyl form reaches the blood after a cream is applied — the assumption that it does not is based on how little of it crosses skin in a dish.

Only seen in animals

Source [01]Source [07]

How far into the skin it gets

Barely past the surface, and only a little further than the plain peptide would go. The fatty acid on the end is there to make the molecule oil-loving rather than water-loving, so it can slip through the greasy dead layer on the outside of skin. In the one experiment that compared the three forms side by side, under 5 per cent of what was applied crossed a sheet of laboratory-grown skin in a whole day.

Never measured in living human skin. The one comparison used a synthetic sheet of skin cells in a laboratory rig over 24 hours: 4.61 per cent of the palmitoyl form crossed, against 3.86 per cent of the copper form and 2.53 per cent of the bare peptide. Adding the fatty acid shifts the molecule's oil-versus-water preference from strongly water-loving to mildly oil-loving. A 2026 framework paper on the safety of cosmetic peptides makes the general point that palmitoyl-tagged peptides of this kind are not expected to reach the bloodstream at all.

Only seen in a dish, not in a body

Source [05]Source [07]

The cells that build collagen, in a dish

This is where the idea came from. The three-amino-acid sequence is a scrap of the same protein that gives skin its structure, and when it is dripped onto skin-building cells in a dish those cells make more collagen. In pieces of human skin burned with ultraviolet light in a laboratory, adding the peptide during the same week left the collagen almost intact. A second experiment found no such dose response.

Only in dishes and in pieces of removed skin, never in a living person. A strong collagen signal appeared in human skin-building cells at a concentration of 0.5 micromoles per litre. Pieces of human skin were irradiated with a daily dose of long-wave ultraviolet for a week, which broke down their collagen; treatment with 5 parts per million of the peptide over the same week was reported to preserve or rebuild almost all of it. Against that, a separate experiment on normal human skin cells with vitamin C found no dose response for collagen, for fibronectin or for hyaluronic acid at up to 7.5 parts per million. A screen of 450 genes found the peptide mostly switched on genes for anchoring and maturing the cells of the outer skin layer, not the collagen ones.

Only seen in a dish, not in a body

Source [01]

The panel's 2014 safety assessment cites two small experiments submitted by the raw material supplier. In one blinded, vehicle-controlled test in 15 women aged 44–59, a cream with 3 ppm pal-GHK for four weeks gave 39% shorter wrinkles, 23% shallower wrinkles and 17% lower skin roughness compared with placebo. In another, in 23 women, skin thickness measured by ultrasound increased by about 4% after four weeks at 4 ppm. Neither has been published as a peer-reviewed paper, and no independent replication was found in this review.

The two tests of the peptide on its own measured once, at 4 weeks, so neither says anything about what was happening before that. The trials of creams containing it among other ingredients measured more often: one found the nose-to-mouth lines already 23 per cent shallower at 4 weeks and 36 per cent shallower at 8, and another found collagen density up 17.5 per cent at 4 weeks, 20.0 per cent at 8 and 55.0 per cent at 12. Nothing has been measured beyond 12 weeks, and no study has followed anyone after they stopped.

What was measuredWhat happenedIn whomHow it is known

Length, depth and roughness of wrinkles around the eye

Wrinkle length fell 39 per cent, wrinkle depth 23 per cent and overall skin roughness 17 per cent, measured against both the starting point and the dummy cream. The dummy cream on its own produced no significant change. All three differences were reported as statistically significant.

15 women aged 44 to 59, cream applied around both eye zones twice a day for 4 weeks, moulds of the skin taken on day 0 and day 28. Reported by a scientist employed by the company that sells the raw material, in a trade magazine, and never peer-reviewed.

One small study

Source [01]

Thickness of the skin, measured by ultrasound

About 4 per cent thicker on the treated patch than on the patch given the cream base alone. Small, but the authors reported it as statistically significant and argued it was not trivial, because ageing thins skin by roughly 6 per cent per decade.

23 healthy women, 4 weeks, the peptide at 4 parts per million in a cream base against the base on its own. Both authors worked for the ingredient supplier.

One small study

Source [01]Source [06]

Deep wrinkles, roughness and elasticity — for the two-peptide blend sold as Matrixyl 3000, not for this peptide alone

Deep wrinkles and roughness fell and elasticity and tone rose after 56 days, all against the starting measurements and all reported at p below 0.01. The cream base on its own produced no significant change over the same period. The blend contains a second peptide, palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7, so none of this can be attributed to this peptide by itself.

24 volunteers, mean age 56.1 years, cream containing 3 per cent of the blend on one half of the face and the base on the other, morning and night for 2 months, with no other anti-wrinkle products allowed. The panel took this account from a supplier synopsis reproduced on a consumer skincare website, not from a journal.

One small study

Source [01]

Collagen density, water content and springiness of the skin around the eye — for a cream with four active ingredients, one of them this peptide

After 12 weeks the treated side of the face had 55.0 per cent more collagen density, 28.1 per cent more water in the skin and 18.8 per cent more springiness than it had at the start, each reported at p below 0.001. The other side of the face was left untreated as the comparison rather than being given a dummy cream, and the published percentages are the treated side's change from its own starting values.

37 healthy women aged 20 to 55, mean age 44.6, applying the eye cream to one side of the face twice a day for 12 weeks. The cream contained this peptide at 0.0002 per cent alongside palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7, a yeast and rice ferment and a sugar acid. The product was supplied by a company several of the authors work for, and the authors record that the trial was not blinded or placebo-controlled.

One small study

Source [08]

Depth of the lines from nose to mouth, firmness and brightness — for a two-cream routine of which this peptide was half

At 56 days the nose-to-mouth lines were 36.35 per cent shallower, firmness was 24.35 per cent higher and brightness 16.29 per cent higher, all at p below 0.001. Every figure is a change from the same women's starting measurements. The paper describes itself as randomised, single-blind and controlled but does not describe any comparison group, and everyone used both creams, so nothing here separates the peptide from the plant compound in the morning cream.

30 Chinese Han women aged 27 to 40, mean age 37.7, using a morning cream with 0.15 per cent baicalin and a night cream with 0.0003 per cent of this peptide for 8 weeks. Publicly funded, with several authors working at two cosmetics companies and a declaration of no conflicts of interest.

One small study

Source [09]

Collagen in the skin of mice

After 8 weeks the collagen fibres were more evenly sized and more tightly and regularly packed, the area they covered was larger and the cross-links between them denser. As in the human part of the same paper, the animals also received a second compound in the morning, so the peptide is not the only explanation.

Eight-week-old female C57BL/6 mice weighing about 20 grams, 6 animals for the collagen measurement and 10 for the microscopy, treated for 8 weeks.

Only seen in animals

Source [09]

In a repeat-patch test in 52 people aged 16–79 with the raw material MAXI-LIP (1,000 ppm pal-GHK), reactions ranging from barely perceptible to moderate were seen during the test phases. They were judged temporary and clinically unimportant, and the conclusion was that the material showed no clinically meaningful potential for irritation or contact allergy. A standard test for genetic damage was negative. In a rabbit eye irritation test the raw material BIOPEPTIDE CL (100 ppm pal-GHK) was classed as mildly irritating, while MAXI-LIP was judged well tolerated in a membrane test. The effect data is uniformly supplier-generated and unpublished.

EffectWhat it feels likeHow often

Faint to moderate redness during patch testing

Reactions ran from barely perceptible to moderate and appeared during the repeat-application stage, the final challenge stage, or both. The laboratory called them temporary, low-level and clinically unimportant, and concluded there was no meaningful potential for irritation or for allergy. The material tested held 1,000 parts per million of the peptide, which is hundreds of times more than the amounts reported in products on sale.

Seen in an unstated number of the 52 people in the repeated-patch test. The report gives the range of reactions but not how many people had them.

Source [01]

Stinging or redness in the eye

A drop of one trade material holding 100 parts per million was put in the eye of 3 rabbits; all three had very slight swelling and redness of the eyelid lining on the first day and nothing after that, and the material was classed as a slight irritant. A different trade material holding 1,000 parts per million was tested on the membrane inside a hen's egg, which stands in for an eye: the body of the review calls it slightly irritating but well tolerated, while the summary of the same review calls it an irritant. Nobody has asked people using an eye product with it in whether it stung.

Not measured in people at all, in any study. Only animal and laboratory tests exist, and they do not agree with each other.

Source [01]

Anything reported during the recent skin trials

Both of those creams contained several active ingredients, so a clean tolerance record belongs to the product rather than to the peptide. A third study, of a serum with ten peptides in it including this one, followed 48 people for 12 weeks and reported that side effects linked to treatment were mild and infrequent without giving numbers.

None. No redness, swelling or whole-body reaction in the 30 women followed for 8 weeks, and none in the 37 women followed for 12 weeks.

Source [08]Source [09]Source [10]

Allergy that builds up with repeated use

The human test applied the material nine times over three weeks, rested for a fortnight and applied it once more; the conclusion was no clinically significant potential for allergic contact sensitisation. A 2026 review of how cosmetic peptides should be assessed notes that molecules this small are below the size at which the antibody-driven kind of allergy can happen, because they are too short to bridge two antibody docking points at once.

Not seen in the one human test designed to find it, in 52 people, nor in a test in 30 guinea pigs.

Source [01]Source [07]

Complaints sent to the American regulator

It was filed in January 2015 by or about a 70-year-old man using a hydrating serum sold as containing 60 per cent Matrixyl 3000 and hyaluronic acid. The complaint lists acne, skin peeling and swelling alongside anxiety, depression and a worsening condition, and whoever filed it recorded the outcome as disability. Reporting to this file is voluntary and nothing in it is verified; the regulator states plainly that a report is not evidence the product caused anything. The database records brand names, not ingredients, so it cannot be asked what happened to people who used this peptide.

One report in the whole file. A search of the United States food and cosmetics regulator's public complaint database for product names containing Matrixyl returns 1 report out of 52,219 cosmetics reports.

Source [11]Source [12]

These are the amounts the studies below gave their participants, and they are here as facts about those studies. They are not a recommendation, not a starting point and not a range to pick from. What a person should take, if anything, is a question for a doctor who knows them.

The only test of the peptide alone on wrinkles — 15 women, against a dummy cream, reported by the raw-material supplier

3 parts per million (0.0003 per cent) in a cream, applied around both eyes twice a day

4 weeks

Source [01]

The only test of the peptide alone on skin thickness — 23 women, against the cream base

4 parts per million in a cream base

4 weeks

Source [06]

The split-face test of the two-peptide blend Matrixyl 3000 — 24 volunteers, mean age 56.1

3 per cent of the blend in a cream, morning and night, on one half of the face; the blend is this peptide together with palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7, and how much of each it contains was not published

2 months

Source [01]

The eye cream trial in 37 women — this peptide as one of four active ingredients

0.0002 per cent (2 parts per million) of this peptide plus 0.0001 per cent palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7 in an eye cream, twice a day to one side of the face

12 weeks

Source [08]

The day-and-night cream trial in 30 women — this peptide in the night cream only

0.0003 per cent (3 parts per million) in a night cream used every night, alongside a morning cream containing 0.15 per cent baicalin

8 weeks

Source [09]

What people report

• Whether it does anything to wrinkles at all in a trial nobody with a commercial interest ran — the only two tests of the peptide alone were submitted by the company that sells it and were never published.
• How large any of its effects are outside those two tests, since every human study since 2014 has put it in a cream with other active ingredients.
• Whether it raises collagen in living human skin — no study has taken a skin sample from a person using it and measured.
• How much of it reaches the layer of human skin where collagen is built; the only penetration figure comes from a sheet of laboratory-grown skin cells.
• Whether the collagen findings in dishes hold up, given that one experiment found a strong signal and another found no dose response at all.
• What it does over more than 12 weeks — no study of any product containing it has run longer.
• Whether anything it does lasts, or reverses, once a person stops; no study has followed anyone past the last day of treatment.
• How often it stings the eye in real use, in products meant for the eye area — the only eye tests are in rabbits and on a hen's-egg membrane, and the review reporting them contradicts itself on the result.
• What it does in pregnancy or to a developing child, and whether it affects cancer risk — the 2014 review found no studies of either.
• How much of it is in any product on sale, because the supplier blend it usually arrives in does not publish the split between its two peptides.
• Whether it adds anything to the second peptide it is nearly always sold with — no study has separated them.

Is this the same thing as copper peptide?

Half of it is. The three amino acids are the same three — glycine, histidine and lysine, written GHK. What differs is what is attached: copper peptide carries a copper ion, and this one carries a 16-carbon fatty acid instead and no copper at all. The fatty acid makes the molecule oil-loving rather than water-loving, which is what lets it cross the greasy dead layer on the outside of skin. It weighs 578.8 and its formula is C30H54N6O5.

Source [05]Source [13]

Has anyone ever run a proper trial on it?

No. The two tests of the peptide alone were in 15 and 23 women for four weeks each, were submitted to a review panel by the company selling the raw material, and were never published in a journal. Searches of the United States clinical trials register in August 2026 for palmitoyl tripeptide, for palmitoyl oligopeptide and for Matrixyl return zero studies each — none recruiting, none completed, none ever registered. A 2025 review searching the literature reported that it found no cellular or clinical studies of the anti-wrinkle properties of this form.

Source [05]Source [14]Source [15]Source [16]

How much of it is in a product?

Almost none, by weight. The industry's use survey reported it at between 0.0000001 and 0.001 per cent — at the top of that range, one part in a hundred thousand. The supplier told the review panel that peptides of this kind are used at 1 to 30 parts per million and that under 10 parts per million is customary. The cream in the one wrinkle test held 3 parts per million.

Source [01]

Why do some labels say palmitoyl oligopeptide instead?

Because the old label name was withdrawn for being ambiguous. Palmitoyl oligopeptide covered two completely different peptides — this GHK one and a six-amino-acid one — and it was retired in 2013 and split into two names. When the review panel counted product uses, 519 were logged under the retired name and 1 under the new one, so a label from that period cannot tell you which peptide is in the jar.

Source [01]

Is it what is in Matrixyl 3000?

It is one of the two peptides in it; the other is palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7, a four-amino-acid piece of an antibody with the same fatty acid attached. How much of each the blend contains has not been published. Nearly every published human test involving this peptide has tested a mixture rather than the peptide, including a 2015 study of the blend by scientists at the company that sells it, which reported that the peptides improved the structure under the skin against a dummy cream without giving figures in its summary.

Source [01]Source [17]

Can it get into the blood?

Nobody has measured whether it does after a cream is applied, and the reasoning that it does not is indirect. Under 5 per cent of what was applied crossed a sheet of laboratory-grown skin in a full day, and a 2026 review of how cosmetic peptides should be assessed reports that a closely comparable fatty-acid-tagged peptide did not get past the outermost dead layer of skin at all. If any did reach the blood, the three-amino-acid part is broken apart there within minutes.

Source [01]Source [05]Source [07]

Each letter represents one amino acid.

1. [01]CIR: Safety Assessment of Tripeptide-1, Hexapeptide-12, their Metal Salts and Fatty Acyl Derivatives, and Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7 as Used in Cosmetics (Final Report, 30 juni 2014) (2014)
2. [02]PubChem: Palmitoyl tripeptide-1 – C30H54N6O5, 578,8 g/mol, IUPAC-namn motsvarande palmitoyl-Gly-His-Lys
3. [03]Commission Regulation (EU) No 655/2013 on common criteria for claims made about cosmetic products (EUR-Lex, CELEX 32013R0655) (2013)
4. [04]WADA: World Anti-Doping Code International Standard – Prohibited List 2026 (i kraft 1 januari 2026) (2026)
5. [05]Mortazavi SM, Mohammadi Vadoud SA, Moghimi HR. Topically applied GHK as an anti-wrinkle peptide: advantages, problems and prospective. Bioimpacts 2025 (2025)
6. [06]Lintner K, Peschard O. Biologically active peptides: from a laboratory bench curiosity to a functional skin care product. Int J Cosmet Sci 2000;22(3):207-18 (2000)
7. [07]Bjerke DL, Li J, Gao Y, Hu P, Lintner K, Hakozaki T. A framework for the safety evaluation of peptides in cosmetics. Curr Res Toxicol 2026 (2026)
8. [08]Yang F et al. Comprehensive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of a new multi-component anti-aging topical eye cream. Skin Res Technol 2024 (2024)
9. [09]Wang C et al. Targeting circadian rhythm for the regulation of skin collagen metabolism. J Cosmet Dermatol 2026;25(1):e70638 (2026)
10. [10]Cayce K, Jacobs KM, Boda S. An open-label study to assess the efficacy and tolerability of a multifunctional, 10-peptide face and neck serum. J Cosmet Dermatol 2026 (2026)
11. [11]openFDA, FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Adverse Event Reporting System — query for product brand names containing "matrixyl", 1 report
12. [12]openFDA, FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Adverse Event Reporting System — query for the cosmetics industry, 52,219 reports
13. [13]PubChem, palmitoyl tripeptide-1 (CID 10231864): C30H54N6O5, 578.8 g/mol
14. [14]ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, search for "palmitoyl tripeptide" — 0 studies returned (2026)
15. [15]ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, search for "palmitoyl oligopeptide" — 0 studies returned (2026)
16. [16]ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, search for "Matrixyl" — 0 studies returned (2026)
17. [17]Mondon P et al. Evaluation of dermal extracellular matrix and epidermal-dermal junction modifications using MALDI-MSI, in vivo reflectance confocal microscopy and echography. J Cosmet Dermatol 2015;14(2):152-60 (2015)