Semax 20mg vials vs a metered nasal spray: what the numbers mean

01The short version

Searches for "Semax 20mg" and "Semax 10mg" are almost always people looking at research-supplier vials of freeze-dried powder and trying to work out how to turn them into something usable. It can be done. This article explains what those numbers mean, how the maths works, and why a finished metered spray is usually the better choice for anyone who is not running a lab.

02What 10mg and 20mg actually mean

The milligram figure is the total peptide in the vial, as a dry powder. It is not a dose. The doses used in the human research were 0.25 to 1 mg intranasally [1], so a 20 mg vial is, in theory, 20 to 80 doses. In practice a fair amount is lost to the walls of the vial, the syringe, the dead space in a pump and the sprays that miss, so the real yield is lower.

The vial also needs to be reconstituted: dissolved in a measured volume of sterile or bacteriostatic water, then transferred to a spray bottle, then dosed by counting sprays of a known volume. Each step introduces error, and the final concentration per spray depends entirely on the volumes you chose.

03The reconstitution maths, if you insist

Concentration is peptide divided by water. Put 20 mg into 10 mL and you have 2 mg per mL. A typical nasal pump delivers about 0.1 mL per press, so each spray carries about 0.2 mg and two sprays are 0.4 mg, in the range the studies used. Change the water volume and every number moves. This is the calculation behind every "Semax dosing chart" you will find online, and it is only as accurate as the pump and your pipetting.

FOCUS-01 does this once, in a facility, with an assayed powder and a calibrated pump, so one spray per nostril is a known dose without a calculator. The batch assay is on the batch results page.

04What goes wrong with home-made sprays

• Sterility. A nasal spray goes into a warm, damp cavity connected to your sinuses. Home reconstitution without a laminar flow hood is a contamination risk, and bacteriostatic water is not a preservative system.
• Stability. Peptide in plain water degrades in weeks. See storage.
• Dose drift. Cheap pumps are inconsistent press to press, and the last quarter of a bottle often sprays less.
• Identity. A vial from a research supplier may or may not be Semax at the stated purity. A certificate of analysis for the powder is the minimum; ours is published.
• Legality of intent. Research-grade vials are sold "not for human use". Buying them for personal use is a grey area covered in Is Semax legal in the UK?

05Cost per dose, honestly

A 20 mg vial from a UK research supplier usually costs somewhere between £40 and £80 delivered, plus water, syringes and a pump bottle. If you get 40 usable doses out of it, that is roughly £1.25 to £2.25 a dose, and the vial route is cheaper on paper. FOCUS-01 is £39 for about 40 doses, so about £1 a dose, with the reconstitution, the sterility and the assay done for you. On cost alone the two are close; on everything else they are not.

06Who should still buy vials

People running experiments, people who want a concentration the spray does not offer, and people who already have the equipment and the habit. For everyone else the spray is the sensible choice, which is why we make it.