Some hair clinics inject a mixture of growth factors into the scalp, and the ingredient list sometimes includes copper tripeptide-1, the cosmetic name for GHK-Cu. A formulation called QR678 is the best documented example. It has a first-in-man pilot study in 1000 patients and a set of follow-up trials[1].
It would be easy to read that as evidence for GHK-Cu in hair loss. It is not, and the reason is simple arithmetic: GHK-Cu is one of at least six active ingredients in the injection. This page goes through what was done, what was reported, and why the result cannot be assigned to the copper peptide.
Key Takeaways
- QR678 contains vascular endothelial growth factor, basic fibroblast growth factor, insulin-like growth factor, keratinocyte growth factor, thymosin beta-4 and copper tripeptide-1, all together in one injection[1].
- The 1000-patient human study had one arm and no comparison group. Its authors report fewer hairs lost on a pull test in 83% of patients[1].
- The authors of the cell and animal paper disclose patents on the formulation, and that paper never tested the mixture without the copper peptide[2].
- Nothing here isolates what GHK-Cu contributes. The injected mixture is not the same thing as a GHK-Cu serum or a GHK-Cu injection.
What Is in the Injection
The human pilot describes the formulation as vascular endothelial growth factor, basic fibroblast growth factor, insulin-like growth factor, keratinocyte growth factor, thymosin beta-4 and copper tripeptide-1, suspended in a sterile injectable vehicle[1]. A second version, QR678 Neo, replaces the growth factors with biomimetic peptides, and also contains copper tripeptide-1, vitamins, minerals and amino acids[2].
In the best-performing mouse solution, copper tripeptide-1 was present at 10 mg per litre. A 0.1 mL injection therefore delivered 0.001 mg of it, next to 0.0005 mg of vascular endothelial growth factor and smaller amounts of the others[2]. By weight, copper peptide was the largest single ingredient in that solution. That does not tell you which ingredient did the work.
The cosmetic ingredient called copper tripeptide-1 is the same molecule as GHK-Cu. The cell experiments in the animal paper label it that way, as the copper complex of glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine[2]. The site’s page on copper tripeptide-1 versus GHK-Cu explains how that name appears on labels.
The Cell and Animal Paper
The 2020 paper is where the formulation’s preclinical work is published. It is useful because it is open about what it did, and it shows how little of it was designed to identify the contribution of any one ingredient[2].
First, the authors ran cell viability assays on human keratinocytes and human fibroblasts. Each ingredient was tested alone. The growth factors showed no cellular toxicity up to 10 parts per million, and copper tripeptide-1 showed none up to 10,000 parts per million[2]. That is a safety screen of single ingredients in cell culture. It does not test the finished mixture, and it says nothing about hair.
Second, the authors injected five solutions of the mixture into the skin of C3H mice that had their backs clipped while the follicles were resting. Each 0.1 mL injection contained all six ingredients in different proportions, and saline injections served as the control[2].
No saline-injected mouse grew hair at the site, and the number of mice growing hair rose from the lowest to the middle solution, with the middle solution at 5 of 5 mice[2]. Higher concentrations did not do better[2].
The paper’s methods describe 15 mice in five groups, while its results table reports each solution out of 5. Those two descriptions do not line up cleanly, so the exact denominators are uncertain. Whatever the count, no solution lacked copper tripeptide-1, and no solution lacked the growth factors[2]. The design cannot separate them.
The Chemotherapy Hair-Loss Model
The third piece was a model of hair loss caused by chemotherapy. Eight-day-old rat pups received one intradermal injection of the mixture or saline, and the next day began seven daily injections of the chemotherapy drug cytosine arabinoside. Hair loss at the injection site was graded from 0 (normal) to 4 (total loss) on day 10[2].
Saline plus the drug scored 4.0 in eight pups. The best mixture plus the drug scored 1.44 in nine pups[2]. The paper reports that hair was retained only in a small zone, about 0.25 cm in radius, around the injection site, and that follicles away from the site were dystrophic and not functional[2].
That last detail is worth stating plainly. The protective effect was local to the needle track. It is a finding about a limited patch of skin in young rats, not about a scalp.
Who Wrote the Paper
The authors are from an aesthetic clinic group in Mumbai. The paper’s disclosure states that the authors have been awarded patents, in the United States and in India, for the hair formulations used in the study[2]. The text also says the formulations hold composition patents and have approval for commercial use in India[2].
That does not make the data wrong. It does mean the people who invented and patented the product are the people reporting that it works. The authors also say the paper publishes preclinical data held on file, issued after the human trial it was meant to support[2]. The paper itself lists a small sample size as a limitation[2].
The Thousand-Patient Pilot
The first-in-man study is the one most often quoted. It was open-label, prospective and single arm. One thousand patients received intradermal scalp injections once every three weeks for eight sessions[1].
A hair pull test was done before every session. Videomicroscopic and global photographs were taken at baseline, after the fourth and eighth sessions, and two months after the last one[1]. Safety was tracked with examinations, questionnaires and laboratory tests[1].
The authors report a significant reduction in hair fall in 83% of patients on the pull test. Most patients showed fewer fine vellus hairs, more thick terminal hairs, and wider shafts[1]. Seventy-five percent of patients believed the injections were helping, and at one year total hair count was higher, with P = 0.002[1]. The treatment was described as well tolerated[1].
Those are encouraging numbers, and they are the authors’ own. The problem is what the design leaves out. With a single arm there is no group that went through the same visits and the same needles without the active mixture. Changes that would have happened anyway, or that come from expectation, cannot be told apart from a drug effect.
A figure like 75% of patients believing the treatment helped is a belief, not a hair count. The abstract also does not say how many of the 1000 patients were still being followed at one year, which matters for reading a one-year result.
The Follow-Up Trials
Two later papers add a comparison group of a kind. One compared QR678 against platelet-rich plasma in male pattern hair loss, with two groups of 25 patients, single-blind, assessed at six months and followed to one year[3]. The authors report a 100% reduction in hair fall in the QR678 group at six months and better videomicroscopic measures than in the plasma group[3].
A comparison against platelet-rich plasma shows that QR678 outperformed another injected treatment in that trial. It does not show a comparison against a saline injection, and it does not isolate the copper peptide. The other paper treated 20 women with long-lasting shedding after Covid-19 using QR678 Neo, with no comparison arm described, and reported improved hair counts[4]. Both are led by Kapoor and Shome, who also wrote the 2020 paper that discloses the patents[3][4].
One Identity Trap in the Discussion
When the 2020 paper explains why copper tripeptide might help hair, it cites work on AHK-Cu, a different copper tripeptide built from alanine, histidine and lysine, which was studied in human hair follicles outside the body and in cultured dermal papilla cells[2]. That is a related molecule, not GHK-Cu.
The same paper’s own cell work used the GHK form, but only for toxicity. So the mechanistic argument for the copper peptide in this mixture partly rests on a neighbouring molecule, and the hair results themselves rest on a mixture.
What This Means for a Reader
If you are comparing hair products, keep the three situations separate. A GHK-Cu serum on the scalp is covered on the site’s page about copper peptide hair serums, and the broader follicle research is in GHK-Cu and hair loss. A clinic injecting a growth-factor cocktail is a third thing.
The clinic mixture is a medical procedure, and the evidence for it comes from the people who patented it. None of it tells you what GHK-Cu alone would do when injected. The site’s article on GHK-Cu injection protocols explains how thin the human evidence for injecting the peptide by itself is.
For hair loss, the starting point is a dermatologist who can diagnose the cause. Different causes call for different treatments, and a cocktail of six ingredients cannot be assumed to be the right one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the QR678 hair injection prove GHK-Cu regrows hair?
No. QR678 contains at least six active ingredients: vascular endothelial growth factor, basic fibroblast growth factor, insulin-like growth factor, keratinocyte growth factor, thymosin beta-4 and copper tripeptide-1. No study reviewed here tested the mixture without the copper peptide, so the effect cannot be assigned to GHK-Cu.
Is copper tripeptide-1 the same as GHK-Cu?
Copper tripeptide-1 is the cosmetic ingredient name for the copper complex of glycyl-L-histidyl-L-lysine. The QR678 cell experiments label it that way. A different copper tripeptide, AHK-Cu, is cited in the same paper’s discussion and is not the same molecule.
Was there a control group in the 1000-patient hair study?
No. It was an open-label, single-arm pilot, so there was no comparison group that received saline or no injection. That limits how much of the result can be credited to the formulation.
Who funded and wrote the QR678 research?
The cell and animal paper comes from an aesthetic clinic group in Mumbai whose authors disclose patents on the formulations. The follow-up trials reviewed here are led by two of the same authors. The abstract of the 1000-patient study does not list funding.
What did the chemotherapy hair-loss experiment show?
In young rats given a chemotherapy drug, hair was retained in a small zone around the injection site of the mixture, and follicles elsewhere were damaged. It was a model in rat pups with eight or nine animals per group, not a scalp study.
Should I get growth-factor hair injections?
That is a decision for a dermatologist who can identify the cause of the hair loss. The available evidence for these injections comes mainly from the group that developed them, and it does not isolate what any single ingredient contributes.
References
- Kapoor R, et al. Intradermal injections of a hair growth factor formulation for enhancement of human hair regrowth – safety and efficacy evaluation in a first-in-man pilot clinical study. Journal of Cosmetic and Laser Therapy (2018). PMID 29482481
- Kapoor R, et al. QR678 & QR678 Neo Hair Growth Formulations: A Cellular Toxicity & Animal Efficacy Study. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Global Open (2020). PMID 32983753
- Kapoor R, et al. QR 678 & QR678 Neo Vs PRP-A randomised, comparative, prospective study. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology (2020). PMID 32333510
- Shome D, et al. Efficacy of QR678 Neo® hair growth factor formulation for the treatment of hair loss in Covid-19-induced persistent Telogen Effluvium-A prospective, clinical, single-blind study. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology (2022). PMID 34875139
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