Separate cluster · cosmetic ingredients

Cosmetic formulation ingredients

9 INGREDIENTS · 9 WITH A REFERENCE PAGE · 9 SOURCED TO ORDER

These are raw materials for people who make things: formulators, cosmetic chemists and small brands who buy an ingredient by its INCI name, weigh it into a batch and need to know what it actually is. They are a different product class from the research compounds in the main catalogue, bought by a different person under a different set of rules, so they live here rather than being mixed into that list.

RAW COSMETIC INGREDIENTS. Supplied as raw material for formulation work, not as finished cosmetics and not for human or veterinary use as supplied. Nothing on this page or on any ingredient page linked from it is a skin, hair, anti-ageing or efficacy claim. Responsibility for the safety assessment, claims and compliance of any finished product rests with whoever formulates and sells it.

What is actually in this list

Four of the nine entries are trade names, not molecules. Matrixyl 3000, Capixyl, Redensyl and SYN-AKE are trademarked blends or complexes; one of them — Redensyl — contains no peptide at all, and another, Matrixyl 3000, is routinely confused with the original Matrixyl, which is a completely different peptide with a completely different (and much better) evidence base. Each ingredient page names the actual constituents, says which part is trademarked and which part is the active, and does not carry the older molecule’s literature across to the newer trade name.

The remaining five are single, defined substances: three synthetic peptides (Acetyl Hexapeptide-8, Acetyl Octapeptide-3, Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3), one copper-peptide complex (AHK-Cu), and one polysaccharide that is not a peptide at all (hyaluronic acid). Every ingredient page carries a reference-data table built from the public chemical record — sequence or constituents, molecular formula, molecular weight, CAS number, appearance — with any field we could not source left out and marked as such rather than filled in from memory.

How honest the evidence is, ingredient by ingredient

This is the part most ingredient pages skip. The published evidence behind cosmetic actives ranges from a genuinely independent randomised trial to a PDF on a supplier’s website, and the marketing rarely distinguishes between the two. Each page states which it is, how many subjects were involved, and who paid. In summary, across these nine:

Best documented: hyaluronic acid, which has an independent Cosmetic Ingredient Review safety assessment and independently-run randomised topical trials.
Real but small and mostly industry-linked: Acetyl Hexapeptide-8 (Argireline) and the palmitoyl-peptide family behind the Matrixyl names — published studies exist, but the founding ones came from the parties who designed or sold the material.
Primarily supplier technical files: Capixyl and Redensyl. The headline trials quoted for both are documents published by Lucas Meyer Cosmetics and Givaudan respectively, not peer-reviewed papers.
Essentially nothing standalone: SNAP-8, which has no indexed study of its own — it appears in the literature only as one component of multi-ingredient commercial products.

None of that makes an ingredient useless. It does mean a formulator should know which claims can be supported by a citation and which cannot, before printing anything on a label.

The list 9

Availability is read from our stock system as this page loaded. Where a row says Available to order, our supplier lists the material and we have not bought it — no price is shown and no cart is offered, because we would be guessing. Tell us the ingredient and the quantity and we come back with what the supplier can actually provide, the lead time and the price.

Ingredient	INCI / constituents	Sizes	Availability	Action
Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3 ingredient page → Tetrapeptide, Ac-Lys-Gly-His-Lys-NH₂	Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3	10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
AHK-Cu ingredient page → Copper-binding tripeptide, sister molecule to GHK-Cu	Ala-His-Lys copper complex — no assigned INCI name found	20mg · 50mg · 100mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
Argireline ingredient page → Hexapeptide, Ac-EEMQRR-NH₂	Acetyl Hexapeptide-8	10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
Capixyl ingredient page → A peptide plus a botanical extract, sold under one trade name	Blend: Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3 + red clover extract	10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
Hyaluronic Acid ingredient page → Polysaccharide (glycosaminoglycan), not a peptide	Hyaluronic Acid / Sodium Hyaluronate	5mg · 10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
Matrixyl 3000 ingredient page → Two lipidated peptides, sold together under one trade name	Blend: Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1 + Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7	10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
Redensyl ingredient page → Two stabilised polyphenols plus glycine and zinc — no peptide	Blend: DHQG + EGCG2 + glycine + zinc	10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
SNAP-8 ingredient page → Octapeptide, an extended Argireline analogue	Acetyl Octapeptide-3	10mg · 100mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →
SYN-AKE ingredient page → Tripeptide-derived small molecule modelled on a snake-venom toxin	Dipeptide Diaminobutyroyl Benzylamide Diacetate	10mg	Available to order typically 2–3 weeks	Enquire →

Sizes are the quantities our supplier lists per vial, not use concentrations. What a formulator would weigh into a batch is a separate question, and each ingredient page states what is actually documented for that material rather than what a brochure recommends.

Checking what you have been sent

A raw cosmetic ingredient is bought on trust unless it comes with data. Two analyses do most of the work, and they answer different questions: mass spectrometry asks whether the material is the molecule it is labelled as, by comparing the measured mass with the expected molecular weight; HPLC asks how much of the material is that molecule and how much is something else, and reports it as a purity percentage. Neither is optional for a peptide, and neither tells you anything about a finished formulation. Every batch we ship carries both on a per-batch Certificate of Analysis you can look up yourself.

Trade-named blends are a harder case, because there is no single expected mass to check against. What can be verified there is the identity and purity of the named peptide constituent — which is one reason the individual ingredient (Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3, for example) is often the more sensible thing to buy than the branded complex built around it.

Verify a batch

Every batch ships with a per-batch Certificate of Analysis reporting HPLC purity and mass-spectrometric identity confirmation. Have a vial in hand? Enter its lot number to look up the certificate for that exact batch.

Verify a batch →How to read a COA

Questions about these ingredients

What is a “cosmetic peptide”?

It is shorthand for a short synthetic peptide sold as a raw material to be dissolved into a topical formulation, identified in an ingredient list by its INCI name rather than a trade name. Several of the best-known ones — Matrixyl 3000, Capixyl, Redensyl, SYN-AKE — are not single peptides at all: they are trademarked blends, and one of them (Redensyl) contains no peptide whatsoever. Each ingredient page here names the actual constituents.

Why are these separated from the research-peptide catalogue?

Because they are a different product for a different buyer under a different regulatory regime. A cosmetic ingredient is bought by a formulator or a small brand to put into a leave-on or rinse-off product; the research compounds in the main catalogue are in-vitro laboratory materials. Mixing the two lists would blur a distinction that matters legally and practically, so they get separate pages.

Do you make skin or hair claims for these ingredients?

No. Every ingredient page reports what published studies measured, at what concentration, in how many subjects, and who funded the work — and says so plainly when the evidence is a supplier technical file rather than an independent published trial. We supply raw material and its identity data. Any claim made about a finished product is the responsibility of whoever formulates and sells it, under the cosmetic regulations that apply where it is sold.

Are these cosmetic-grade or research-grade materials?

They are supplied as raw materials with a per-batch Certificate of Analysis reporting HPLC purity and mass-spectrometric identity confirmation. They are not supplied as finished cosmetics, and a Certificate of Analysis is not a cosmetic safety assessment: a finished product still needs its own stability, preservative-efficacy and safety assessment work under the rules of the market it is sold in.

How do I order something marked “Available to order”?

Message us with the ingredient and the quantity. We confirm what the supplier can actually provide, the lead time and the price before anything is agreed. Nothing on this page is a firm offer or a quoted price, and no price is shown for material we have not bought yet.

Why does the evidence section on some of these pages read as sceptical?

Because the evidence genuinely is thin in several cases. Two of the nine ingredients rest primarily on supplier technical files rather than independently published trials, one has no indexed standalone study at all, and several of the published clinical studies test multi-ingredient finished products from which no single ingredient’s contribution can be isolated. A formulator is better served by knowing that than by reading it restated as fact.

The other 85 compounds we can source — the research-peptide list, which is a separate product class from everything on this page — are in the sourcing catalogue. Research write-ups live in the research library, and any batch certificate can be checked on verify.

RESEARCH USE ONLY — NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. All products are sold strictly for in-vitro laboratory research and are not intended for human or veterinary use, ingestion, or administration. Nothing on this page is a medical or efficacy claim. You must be 21 or older to browse this catalog.