GB-115
guinea pig
The Dose Guy’s verdictAug 29, 20263 sources
GB-115 is an obscure Russian dipeptide anxiolytic with one small human study, 31 patients for 21 days, and a stack of animal work. The mechanism is interesting, a cholecystokinin-receptor antagonist rather than the GABA machinery the rest of this column runs on, but interesting is not evidence. There is not enough human data to recommend it, and everything else on this shelf does the anxiolytic job with actual receipts behind it. If you are the type who likes to try compounds at the frontier, this is frontier. If you want something that works, look at pregabalin or propranolol.
What it is
GB-115 is a synthetic dipeptide, a retro-analogue of the cholecystokinin tetrapeptide CCK-4. Cholecystokinin is one of the brain’s anxiety signals. CCK-4 in particular is used in research to induce panic attacks on purpose. GB-115 antagonizes that system, blocking the anxiety signal at the receptor rather than boosting inhibition the way GABA compounds do. That makes it mechanistically different from everything else on this shelf. Pregabalin, gabapentin, baclofen, and phenibut all work the GABA or calcium-channel side. GB-115 works the CCK side.
The compound comes from the same Russian research tradition as selank, developed at the Institute of Pharmacology, while selank came out of the Institute of Molecular Genetics. It was designed as an orally active anxiolytic with no sedation or dependence, and the animal data broadly supports that profile. The problem is that the animal data is essentially all there is.
What the research shows
One human study, no RCT, and a catalog of animal work. The receipts:
Realistic protocols
I am not building a protocol out of one 31-person open-label study and a pile of rat data. The published human dose is 6 mg/day orally, which is the dose from that single study. Some people in the community run it as a nasal spray at lower doses. Beyond that, there is no dosing curve to map because nobody has mapped it in humans.
If you run it anyway: go low, go short, log what you notice. The rat data suggests no dependence at 30 days, which is encouraging but is not human safety. Most of what you swallow never reaches the blood, which explains the interest in nasal delivery. Do not treat any of this as confidence. It is an experiment, and you are the subject.
Side effects
No human side-effect data exists beyond “safe and well tolerated” from 31 people over 21 days:
