Compound names, codes and salt forms

Read from the left, a title gives the name and ends with the amount per vial and its unit: mg, mcg, IU or mL. The amount is always per vial; the box total is a separate row of the sheet, computed as that amount times the number of vials. A blend title adds the components and their amounts, and its final figure is the combined amount in the vial.

The sheet's address is written from the same name, with the amount spelled out: a 10 mg sheet ends in “10-milligram”, an IU sheet in “units”. A second name in brackets is left out of the address, and a plus sign is dropped between blend components or spelled “plus” at the end of a name, as in NAD+.

At this revision the library holds 174 sheets under 89 distinct names, of which 10 are blends.

Many names on the list are codes rather than words: a few capital letters joined to a number, such as BPC-157, TB-500 or SS-31. A code of this kind is a label assigned to a compound while it was being catalogued or studied; the letters and the number do not spell out its structure, and the same code can be written with or without its hyphen. 30 of the 79 single-compound names here contain a number.

Some names do encode structure, and can be read directly:

• KPV is written in one-letter amino-acid codes: lysine – proline – valine.
• GHK-Cu is written in one-letter amino-acid codes: glycine – histidine – lysine, as a copper (Cu) complex.
• A number followed by “AA” gives a length in amino acids: “191AA” is a sequence of 191 residues.
• A pair of numbers joined by a hyphen after a name marks a stretch of a longer sequence, from the first residue to the second: ACTH 1-39, HGH Fragment 176-191.

Searching is forgiving about the way a code is typed. The search on the compound list ignores case, spaces and punctuation, so “bpc157” and “BPC 157” both find BPC-157.

A name in brackets after the main name is another name for the same material: a longer chemical name, or the name under which the material is better known. It adds no second component; a blend lists its components inside brackets too, but always with an amount for each, which is how the two cases are told apart.

• HGH 191AA (Somatropin)
• TB-500 (Thymosin B4 Acetate)

When a sheet is matched to an outside reference, either name may be the one the reference uses. A CAS number, where the record holds one, settles the match independently of the wording (REF-01).

Peptides are commonly isolated as salts, and a word such as “acetate” at the end of a name states the counter-ion of the salt form: the peptide paired with acetate. The word belongs to the identity of the material, which is why it is kept in the title rather than trimmed. 7 names on the list carry it.

A title does not state whether its amount per vial counts the peptide alone or the peptide together with its counter-ion. The sheet prints the amount as listed and computes both the box total and the per-mg price from that figure, without adjusting it.

One name appears both with and without the salt-form word (Sermorelin). The two are filed as separate compounds, each with its own sheets and sheet IDs, exactly as the catalog records them; the library does not merge them.

Some names come in pairs separated by one qualifier: “with DAC” and “without DAC”, or a Roman numeral, as in Melanotan I and Melanotan II. Each member of a pair is a different compound with its own sheets, not two spellings of one. A blend title may write the same qualifier in a shorter form, such as “No-DAC”; the component it names is the one filed as “without DAC”.

Where a compound is filed at several vial amounts, its substance sheet lists them under one name, so a qualifier that separates two compounds is never hidden inside a single list.

A name identifies material. It carries no purity figure, no lot, no storage condition and no price, and it implies nothing about use: every compound in the library is supplied for laboratory research only. The other rows of the sheet, and the notes on rows a sheet leaves out and sheet IDs, cover what the name does not.