What Is PE-22-28? Dosage, Half-Life & How to Track It

What PE-22-28 is and how it works

PE-22-28 is a short synthetic peptide — seven amino acids, sequence GVSWGLR — engineered from a fragment of sortilin, a protein involved in intracellular transport and receptor signaling. Its target is the TREK-1 potassium channel, a channel implicated in mood regulation; PE-22-28 is designed to selectively block it.

In animal studies, that TREK-1 blockade produced antidepressant-like effects that showed up faster than conventional antidepressants, alongside signs of increased neurogenesis (new neuron formation) and general neuroprotection — with a notably clean safety signal in those models, without the cardiac or metabolic side effects that some other TREK-1-targeting compounds carry.

Worth being direct about this one: the evidence is preclinical (animal and cell-based), there is no published human trial data, and it is not approved or reviewed for human use anywhere. Of the peptides in this library, PE-22-28 has the thinnest track record — treat any dosing information as a research-community estimate, not a validated protocol.

Typical dosing & reconstitution

PE-22-28 ships as a lyophilized powder and is reconstituted with bacteriostatic water. Community protocols run 50–200 mcg subcutaneously once daily, titrated gradually across 8–16 weeks; because it is reported to be highly potent, many people find 100–150 mcg enough without pushing to the top of the range.

A 10 mg vial in 3 mL BAC water (~3.33 mg/mL) is the common setup — here’s how a gradual titration maps to units:

At 3.33 mg/mL, 1 unit on a U-100 insulin syringe is about 33.3 mcg — small enough that a 30- or 50-unit syringe reads more accurately than a standard 100-unit one. The reconstitution calculator works the concentration out for any vial and water amount.

Half-life & what it means for frequency

PE-22-28’s pharmacokinetics haven’t been characterized in humans — there is no published half-life to cite, which is itself a marker of how early-stage this compound is. Animal protocols use once-daily subcutaneous dosing, the schedule the community protocol above borrows.

As a short peptide of similar size and structure to others on this list, it would be reasonable to expect a short blood half-life — on the order of minutes to an hour — but that is an inference from comparable compounds, not a measured fact for PE-22-28 specifically. Worth being precise about the difference between “known” and “assumed” here.

What to track & common side effects

Because there is no human trial data, there is no established human side-effect profile either — animal studies reported a favorable safety signal (no cardiac or metabolic effects observed), but that does not guarantee the same holds in people. Injection-site reactions are the most commonly anecdotally reported issue.

Given how thin the evidence is, what’s most worth tracking is basic safety monitoring — any new or unusual symptom, not just the intended mood or cognitive effect — alongside the dose and titration week, so a reaction can be traced back to a specific step in the ramp rather than guessed at.

Frequently asked questions