One molecule, two regulatory systems
Every row cites its source. Where a cell reflects our own reading of the evidence rather than an external source, the row says so.
| Dimension | Russia | United States | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal category | Listed among 14 registered Russian peptide drugs in a peer-reviewed review, classified as an anxiolytic | No approved drug product; sold as a research chemical, and described in the peer-reviewed literature as sold to US consumers as a dietary supplement | source |
| Regulator review of safety | Registration implies a national review; we could not access the register record itself to describe it | None. FDA states it lacks important information regarding any safety issues raised by selank acetate administered to humans | source |
| Manufacturing oversight | Pharmaceutical manufacture under national regulation | None. No pharmacopoeial monograph and no validated quality standard; identifying seized product required a government laboratory to build a bespoke LC-MS/MS method | source |
| What you are buying | A prescription product with a label | A nasal spray or lyophilized powder from an unregulated seller, with contents verified by nobody | source |
| Evidence base | Same studies as the US column: small, Russian-language, mostly without stated dose or blinding | Same studies. The evidence does not improve or worsen by crossing a border; only the oversight does | source |
| Independent replication | None; the literature is domestic | None. Zero original selank studies from a non-Russian institution in the PubMed index | source |
This is the clearest way to see what research-chemical status means. Nothing about the molecule changes between these two columns. What changes is whether any authority has reviewed it, and whether anyone is checking what is in the bottle.