{"slug":"matrixyl","seoKey":"matrixyl","displayName":"Matrixyl (Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4)","codes":["Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 (INCI)","Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-3","Pal-KTTKS","C16-KTTKS","Matrixyl (Sederma/Croda)"],"synonyms":["palmitoyl pentapeptide-4","palmitoyl pentapeptide-3","pal-KTTKS","Pal-Lys-Thr-Thr-Lys-Ser","palmitoyl pentapeptide","N2-(1-oxohexadecyl)-L-lysyl-L-threonyl-L-threonyl-L-lysyl-L-serine","Lipopentapeptide 3","Oristar POPP","Pentapeptide-4 (the unpalmitoylated KTTKS is a DIFFERENT INCI entry)","Myristoyl Pentapeptide-4 (the fourteen-carbon relative is a DIFFERENT substance)","Pal-KTSKS (a DIFFERENT sequence sold under the same ingredient name)"],"legalClass":"cosmetic","identifiers":{"cas":"214047-00-4","pubchemCid":9897237,"unii":"KK181SM5JG","inchikey":"WSGCRSMLXFHGRM-DEVHWETNSA-N","wikidataQid":"Q18386276","formula":"C39H75N7O10","molecularWeight":802.06,"sequence":"Pal-KTTKS"},"approvals":[{"market":"US","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine: a query of the drug approval records for the substance name returned no match on 2026-09-20, and an enforcement query returned no recalls. The labelling database lists three products containing the substance, all of them cosmetics marketed with drug-style labelling, none with it as an active ingredient. It is not named on the list of bulk drug substances for compounding that may present significant safety risks, and a full-text search of the warning letter database for the substance and its trade name returned no results. As a cosmetic ingredient it is lawful and heavily used: cosmetics are not pre-approved, and the 2022 cosmetics modernisation act requires registration, listing and safety substantiation but no ingredient approval. The industry expert panel's first draft safety assessment of this ingredient group went to its meeting of 11 and 12 September 2023 and has never reached a conclusion; the draft records that no subchronic, chronic, reproductive, developmental or carcinogenicity studies were found or submitted. Industry survey data for 2023 report the ingredient in 239 formulations, 223 of them leave-on, up from 51 in 2012.","source":"https://api.fda.gov/drug/drugsfda.json?search=openfda.substance_name:%22PALMITOYL+PENTAPEPTIDE-4%22"},{"market":"EU","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine: the full register of centrally authorised human and veterinary medicines was downloaded and searched on 2026-09-20 with no match for the substance, its sequence abbreviation or its trade name. It is a listed cosmetic ingredient with the declared function skin conditioning. The consolidated full text of the cosmetics regulation (version of 1 January 2025, some 2.16 million characters) was searched: the substance appears in none of the prohibition or restriction annexes. Cosmetics need no pre-market approval; required instead are a safety report, a responsible person in the Union and notification through the central portal, with advertising claims bound by the common criteria regulation. No substance-specific opinion of the scientific safety committee was found (unconfirmed negative finding). A product with a medicinal purpose, such as an injectable preparation, would fall under medicines law and could not be marketed without an authorisation.","source":"https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2009/1223/2025-01-01"},{"market":"DE","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine: no national or EU marketing authorisation, and a substance with a medicinal purpose may not be placed on the market without one. The directly applicable EU cosmetics regulation governs it as a cosmetic ingredient, supplemented by national food and cosmetics law; there is no substance-specific German regulatory decision. Not named in the narcotics act and not named in the annex to the anti-doping act, whose text was retrieved on 2026-09-20 and whose three groups — anabolic agents, peptide hormones and growth factors, hormone and metabolic modulators — contain no matching entry. Decisive for wording rather than for the substance: advertising an unauthorised but authorisation-requiring medicinal product is prohibited, while a neutral account of the state of research remains lawful.","source":"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/antidopg/anlage.html"},{"market":"UK","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine: a search of the electronic medicines compendium on 2026-09-20 returned no results at all for the substance class. Permitted as a cosmetic ingredient under the cosmetics regulation carried over into domestic law. NOT FULLY PRIMARY-VERIFIED: the regulator's product database is a single-page application and returned no machine-readable results, so the negative finding rests on the compendium alone, and the cosmetic side was not checked against the domestic regulation text.","source":"https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/search?q=pentapeptide"},{"market":"AU","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine and not scheduled: the full text of the poisons standard of June 2026 (about 850,000 characters) was downloaded and searched on 2026-09-20 with no match for the substance, its sequence abbreviation, its trade name or the neighbouring peptide classes, while control queries in the same document returned the expected entries for growth hormone releasing peptides and for an epidermal growth factor preparation. Instructive for the boundary: collagen itself is scheduled, but expressly only in preparations for injection or implantation, which does not cover a topical collagen fragment. Cosmetically lawful, not scheduled, not prescription-only. NOT PRIMARY-VERIFIED for the register of therapeutic goods: that search returned no response on 2026-09-20, so the negative finding there rests on the poisons standard.","source":"https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2026L00633/asmade"},{"market":"CA","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine: the drug product database was queried by active ingredient on 2026-09-20 for both the acyl group and the peptide class and returned empty lists, while a control query in the same endpoint returned several entries — this negative finding is verified. The cosmetic side is NOT verified: the cosmetic ingredient hotlist was not checked, so whether the substance is listed there is unconfirmed. The raw material supplier states to the industry expert panel that it has supplied the material to Canada among other markets since 1999.","source":"https://health-products.canada.ca/api/drug/activeingredient/?ingredientname=palmitoyl"},{"market":"CH","status":"not_approved","note":"Not a medicine: the regulator's list of authorised human medicines (about 1.0 MB, 11,401 text values) was downloaded and searched on 2026-09-20 for the substance, the peptide class, the sequence abbreviation and the trade name with no match, while control queries returned the expected products. CAVEAT: that list carries product names rather than active ingredient names throughout — a control ingredient name returned no hits although its product is listed — so the negative finding is established at product-name level and only circumstantial at ingredient level. Cosmetics fall under food law and the federal ordinance on cosmetic products, not under therapeutic products law, and no authorisation procedure exists for them; this was not verified substance-specifically.","source":"https://www.swissmedic.ch/dam/swissmedic/de/dokumente/internetlisten/zugelassene_arzneimittel_ham_ind.xlsx.download.xlsx/Zugelassene_Arzneimittel_HAM.xlsx"}],"devStage":"preclinical","strongestEvidence":"rct_phase2","wada":{"status":"not_listed","listYear":2026,"source":"https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list"},"trials":[],"sameAs":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18386276","https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/9897237"],"lastVerified":"2026-09-20","version":"1.0","published":true,"locale":"en","title":"Matrixyl: what the studies show, status and safety","summary":"Matrixyl is the trade name of Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4, also written Pal-KTTKS: a five-part fragment of a collagen precursor with a fatty acid attached. It is a skin-care ingredient, applied to the skin at a few parts per million, and it has never been approved or studied as an injection anywhere. One vehicle-controlled trial of the peptide on its own exists, in 93 women, run by the company that sold the cream, and it published no effect sizes. The only permeation study found 0.6 per cent of the applied dose in the dermis, and the American expert panel's safety review, first drafted in 2023, has never reached a conclusion.","updated":"2026-09-20","url":"https://mypep.app/peptides/matrixyl"}