Semax On Arrival: What to Check and Do First

When a Semax order arrives, check that each vial’s seal and cap are intact and that the powder looks like a dry, white cake or loose powder, then put the vials in the fridge, or the freezer for long-term storage, and the ready-mixed nasal spray straight into the fridge. Lyophilised Semax travels perfectly well without an ice pack.

This page covers the first few minutes after the parcel is opened. Longer-term storage is on the Semax storage page.

Why there is no ice pack

Every order ships within Canada by Canada Post Xpresspost, and the lyophilised vials travel without refrigeration. Freeze-drying removes the water that peptide degradation needs: in a dry solid, molecules are held in place and the chemistry that matters for Semax, oxidation of its N-terminal methionine, has almost no medium to happen in (Wang, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, 2000). Semax is also a short, proline-capped peptide with no asparagine, glutamine, aspartate or cysteine, so it lacks the residues that make some peptides fragile even as solids. A few days at ordinary transit temperatures is not a concern for the powder.

Ice packs are not just unnecessary for lyophilised vials; they can do harm. A pack pressed against a vial can chill it unevenly, and when the parcel warms up, condensation forms on the glass and around the stopper.

What to check

The vial

• Flip-off cap in place and the crimped aluminium seal tight around the neck.
• Rubber stopper undamaged under the cap, with no puncture marks.
• Glass intact, with no cracks or chips, especially at the neck.

The Semax cake

Lyophilised Semax is white to off-white. A 10 mg fill is a small quantity, so the cake is modest in size and may look like:

• a solid disc or puck at the bottom of the vial;
• a cake that has pulled away from the walls or cracked into pieces;
• loose powder or a thin film spread around the base or lower walls after the vial has been tipped and shaken in transit.

All of these are normal. How a cake looks depends on the freeze-drying cycle and on handling in the parcel, not on the quality of the peptide inside. Because the fill is small, a dislodged cake can be hard to see at first; tilt the vial against a dark background to find it.

What is not expected is a wet, syrupy or sticky-looking residue, or a yellow to brown colour. Those suggest moisture has reached the powder. If you see either, or a broken seal, keep the vial aside unopened and contact us.

The nasal spray

The Semax Nasal Spray and the Selank + Semax Nasal Spray arrive ready-mixed in a sealed metered pump (0.175 mL per press). The solution should be clear and colourless, with the cap on. A short spell at transit temperatures is fine; from now on it is treated like a mixed vial.

What to do first

1. Unpack and inspect as above, keeping vials in their box.
2. Lyophilised vials into the fridge (2 to 8 °C) if they will be used in the coming weeks, or into the freezer for long-term storage. Keep them boxed and away from light.
3. The nasal spray into the fridge, upright and capped. Never in the freezer.
4. Bacteriostatic water can stay at room temperature until it is opened; follow its own label after that.
5. Do not mix yet unless you are ready to start. The sealed vial is Semax’s most stable form, and the 8 to 12 week mixed window only begins once water goes in.

When the time comes to reconstitute, let the vial reach room temperature before you open it, so condensation does not form on the cake. The full method is in the Semax reconstitution guide, and bench practice is on the Semax handling page.

If a parcel was delayed

A lyophilised vial that spent extra days in transit, including in warm or cold weather, is still fine as a dry solid as long as the seal is intact and the powder looks dry. A ready-mixed spray that sat warm for a long time is a different case because it is a solution; put it in the fridge straight away and check that it is clear and colourless.

Where things are

The general rules for every peptide in the catalogue are in how to store research peptides. Our certificates for the catalogue are on the lab reports page.