What Strength Is Skin Biology's Copper Peptide?
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Skin Biology matters here more than most. Dr Loren Pickart's work is the foundation of the entire copper peptide field, and the brand has a long-standing reputation among people who have been using these for decades.
So this is a question worth answering carefully rather than scoring a point on. We sell a competing product, which you should factor in.
The short answer
Skin Biology does not publish a GHK-Cu concentration on any of the four products we checked.
We did not stop at the product page. The concentration is absent from the page HTML, from the brand's own MSDS document linked from that page, from their product guide, and from the bottle label image. Four sources, no number.
The four products
| Product | Concentration | pH | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| CP Serum | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | $27.50 / 1oz |
| Super CP Serum | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | $34.00 / 1oz |
| Super Cop 2X | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | $66.00 / 1oz |
| Folligen Cream | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | $29.00 |
All four publish a full INCI list, so the ingredient transparency is there. It is specifically the amount that is not.
What you can infer instead
The product naming does carry information, even if it is not a number. CP Serum, then Super CP Serum, then Super Cop 2X reads as an ascending strength ladder, and the pricing supports that reading: $27.50, $34.00, $66.00 for the same 1oz size.
So you can rank them against each other. What you cannot do is compare any of them against a product that states a percentage. There is no conversion between "Super" and "1%".
Their pages also use relative strength language rather than absolute figures. That is a legitimate way to describe a product line. It is just not the same as a number.
Why this is not a scandal
There is no legal requirement to disclose concentration, and most of this category does not. Of 23 products we checked, 9 did not state one. Skin Biology is in the majority, not the outlier.
There is also a defensible reason a formulator might withhold it: concentration alone is a poor predictor of outcome without knowing the pH, the base and the delivery system. A brand can reasonably argue that a bare percentage misleads more than it informs.
We disagree with that argument, obviously, since we publish ours. But it is an argument rather than an evasion.
What we would want to know if we were buying
If you are choosing between products, ask for concentration, formulation pH and base type. If a brand answers all three, you can compare. If it answers none, you are buying on reputation and on how your skin responds, which are real inputs but not comparable ones.
Skin Biology has decades of reputation behind it, which is worth something a spec sheet cannot capture.
Related
- The disclosure index, all 23 products.
- The six specs that decide a copper peptide serum.
- Our audit of the clinical evidence.
If Skin Biology publishes a concentration somewhere we did not look, email support@amide.skin with the link and we will correct this page and say we were wrong.