Glow peptide blend: GHK-Cu, BPC-157 and TB-500

Overview

This guide makes no cosmetic, skin or health claims. It covers what the name refers to, what each component is, how the pen sold here is labelled, and the blend's status in UK regulation and in sport. Commercial note: this shop sells the Glow 70mg Pen, so the product link on this page is commercial, and no published research on GHK-Cu, BPC-157 or TB-500 tested this shop's stock.

Labelling. The Glow 70mg Pen in this shop's catalogue is a prefilled pen labelled KLIKGLOW. In the product photographs, the pen and box labels read “BPC157+TB500+GHKCu (10+10+50mg/3ml)”: 10 mg BPC-157, 10 mg TB-500 and 50 mg GHK-Cu, 70 mg in total. The labelled 70 mg is the total, not the amount of any one component. The catalogue entry records only the total, and no batch report for this pen is published yet, so the split given here comes from the label alone. The label on the pen supplied always applies.

Comparison. The Wolverine 40mg Pen holds 20 mg each of BPC-157 and TB-500 and no GHK-Cu. The BPC-157 + TB-500 Pen Bundle holds 10 mg of each, as Glow does, but in two separate pens and without GHK-Cu. The GHK-Cu 100mg Pen holds GHK-Cu alone. Because Glow's 70 mg total is shared between three compounds, it cannot be compared directly with the 40 mg total on Wolverine or the 100 mg total on the single-compound GHK-Cu pen.

UK regulation. No medicine containing BPC-157, TB-500 or GHK-Cu holds a UK marketing authorisation. The FDA's July 2026 briefing documents found no approved TB-500 product in the UK and no approved BPC-157 product in any country, and searches of the MHRA's products database on 22 October 2026 for prezatide and copper tripeptide (names for GHK-Cu) returned no results. The MHRA judges whether a finished product is a medicine from how it is presented and whether it works as one, and it classifies whole products rather than single ingredients. Its guidance notes that a statement that a product is not a medicine is persuasive but not conclusive on its own. This is a summary, not legal advice.

Cosmetics law. GHK-Cu also appears in cosmetics as copper tripeptide-1. UK cosmetics law covers only products intended for the outside of the body or the teeth and mouth, so a blend sold for laboratory research is not a cosmetic product.

Sport. Glow contains two substances named on the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2026 Prohibited List: BPC-157 under S0 and TB-500 under S2.3, as a derivative of thymosin-β4. Both are prohibited at all times, in and out of competition, and the 2027 List, in force from 1 January 2027, keeps both entries. GHK-Cu is not named on either List, but that does not show it is permitted: S0 also covers any pharmacological substance with no current approval by any governmental regulatory health authority for human therapeutic use, and the List does not say whether that includes GHK-Cu.

Discovery & Background

GHK-Cu: GHK, the peptide part, was first reported in 1973 by Pickart and Thaler as a tripeptide in human serum. Its sequence, glycyl-histidyl-lysine, was identified in 1977, and a 1982 spectroscopy study described its 1:1 complex with copper(II). BPC-157: a 15-residue fragment of BPC, a protein from human gastric juice described by Sikirić and colleagues in 1993. Researchers in Zagreb first made BPC-157 in the early 1990s, and it has also been known as PL 14736 and Bepecin. TB-500: a product name rather than a scientific one. In 2012 the doping control laboratory at Ghent University identified the N-terminal acetylated 17–23 fragment of thymosin beta-4 (Ac-LKKTETQ) in a formulation called TB-500. Thymosin beta-4 itself is a 43-residue peptide originally isolated from calf thymus. Glow, the combined label, is a market name with no scientific definition.

Mechanism of Action

This section covers composition and identity only, not effects. Glow is a mixture, so its identity is that of its three components. Each is a defined molecule with a sequence, formula and mass that a laboratory can check.

• 1
  GHK-Cu is a copper(II) complex of the tripeptide glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine (Gly-His-Lys). PubChem lists it as prezatide copper (CAS 89030-95-5, also copper tripeptide-1), with a computed molecular weight of 402.92 g/mol for the formula it depicts (C14H23CuN6O4+); certificates may report a different form, such as a salt. In solution at neutral pH the peptide forms a 1:1 complex with copper(II), which is bound by two or three nitrogen atoms, one of them in the histidine ring.
• 2
  BPC-157 is a synthetic 15-residue peptide, Gly-Glu-Pro-Pro-Pro-Gly-Lys-Pro-Ala-Asp-Asp-Ala-Gly-Leu-Val (GEPPPGKPADDAGLV). The US FDA gives the free base as C62H98N16O22 at 1419.5 g/mol. It is also made as an acetate salt, which weighs more, so a certificate should say which form was tested.
• 3
  TB-500 usually means a synthetic N-acetylated 7-residue peptide, Ac-Leu-Lys-Lys-Thr-Glu-Thr-Gln (Ac-LKKTETQ), matching residues 17 to 23 of the 43-residue thymosin beta-4. The FDA gives the free base as C38H68N10O14 at 889.01 g/mol and the acetate salt at 949.1 g/mol.
• 4
  The TB-500 name is used loosely. The Ghent laboratory identified the 17–23 fragment in one formulation called TB-500, and the FDA notes that sources often do not say whether the free base or the salt is meant. Only a mass-spectrometry result shows which molecule a tested sample contains.
• 5
  For a blend, a useful certificate of analysis identifies each component separately, for example by its chromatography peak and measured mass, and states the amount of each. The three molecules differ widely in size (about 403 g/mol for GHK-Cu, 1,420 for BPC-157 and 889 for TB-500), which helps a laboratory tell them apart. A single purity percentage on its own does not show how a 70 mg total is divided.
• 6
  A PubMed search on 22 October 2026 found no peer-reviewed study of GHK-Cu, BPC-157 and TB-500 tested together as one mixture.

Frequently Asked Questions