Semax has no FDA or EMA authorisation and therefore no approved label anywhere this site's readers are likely to live. The figures below are reported from published studies and are described to explain how the compound has been studied, not to define a protocol for anyone.
Overview
Semax dosing is easy to misread because two incompatible sets of numbers circulate. The clinical literature describes an intranasal solution given at milligram-scale daily totals for short courses; online sources describe a few hundred micrograms per day, often for subcutaneous injection. Neither translates to the other, because Semax was formulated as a nasal preparation from the start, and route determines how much peptide actually reaches the brain.
What the published studies used
The clearest figure in the English-indexed literature comes from the 110-patient post-stroke rehabilitation study, which used 6,000 mcg per day for 10 days, repeated after a 20-day interval, delivered intranasally (Gusev et al. 2018). That is roughly an order of magnitude above the amounts typically described in consumer discussions — a gap worth noticing, because it shows the figures traded online are not scaled-down versions of a clinical regimen but a separate folk tradition.
The earlier 187-patient cerebrovascular study reported clinical improvement and good tolerability, including in elderly patients, without a comparable dose figure in its abstract (Gusev, Skvortsova and Chukanova 2005). Both regimens share a structure that consumer use usually does not: a defined course with an end date, in a patient with a diagnosis, under supervision.
Why concentration, not drops, is the unit that matters
Nasal preparations are described in percent, and the percentage is the whole story. A 0.1% solution contains 1 mg of peptide per millilitre; a 1.0% solution contains ten times that. Since a drop is roughly the same volume either way, "two drops per nostril" can mean two very different exposures depending on which bottle it came from.
This is why counting drops is not a dose and why the stronger concentration is associated in the Russian literature with acute neurological indications rather than everyday use. Anyone reading a figure without its concentration attached is reading an incomplete number.
The pharmacokinetics behind daily dosing
Semax is fast in and fast out, which explains why every studied regimen is daily or divided rather than weekly. In rats given tritium-labelled Semax intranasally at 50 mcg/kg, peptide appeared in the brain within 2 minutes — about 0.093% of the administered radioactivity per gram of brain tissue, roughly 80% of it as intact Semax — and enzymatic degradation proceeded rapidly, with the tripeptide Pro-Gly-Pro emerging as the dominant metabolite (Shevchenko et al., Bioorg Khim 2006).
Two consequences follow. First, there is no steady state to build toward and no loading concept — each dose is a brief pharmacological event. Second, the fraction of an administered dose that reaches brain tissue is small, which is part of why studied intranasal totals are so much larger than the amounts people assume are sufficient.
Injectable "research" Semax has no dosing literature
Powder sold for reconstitution and subcutaneous injection is the most common form bought online and the least supported one. No published clinical study of Semax used that route, so there is no dose–response curve, no tolerability series, and no basis for converting an intranasal figure into an injected one — bioavailability differs between routes, and the intranasal data specifically describe transport across nasal mucosa, not systemic absorption.
Layered on top is the ordinary uncertainty of unregulated material: vial content accuracy, reconstitution volume, and syringe reading each introduce error before the peptide reaches anyone. Concrete decisions about an unapproved compound belong with a qualified clinician; the numbers on this page are context for reading the literature, not a regimen. Background on the compound is on the main Semax page.