Cortistatin-29 is a neuropeptide that is structurally similar to somatostatin-28. It is produced by cleavage of preprocortistatin to procortistatin, which is cleaved at dibasic amino acids to form cortistatin-29 and cortistatin-14 as well as other partial cleavage products. Cortistatin mRNA is expressed in the human brain and in interneurons of the rat hippocampus and cerebral cortex. Cortistatin-29 binds to somatostatin (SST) receptors with IC50 values of 2.8, 7.1, 0.2, 3, and 13.7 nM for SST1-5, respectively. Cortistatin-29 is found at similar levels as cortistatin-14 in mouse AtT20 cells but is secreted at a lower level. Cortistatin-29 corresponds to residues 85-112 of the rat peptide sequence.