Clinical trial breakdowns and study reviews.
Antibiotic resistance is no longer a future problem. It is a present one. The WHO has called it one of the top ten global public health threats, and wound infections sit squarely at the intersection of this crisis.
In 2015, a Phase I clinical trial enrolled 42 healthy volunteers to test BPC-157 — a peptide with over 100 supportive animal studies behind it. The trial was completed. And then, without explanation, the researchers cancelled submission of the results.
For decades, scientists treated mitochondrial DNA like a one-trick genome — 37 genes devoted almost entirely to energy production.
Between 2001 and 2025, roughly two dozen studies have investigated KPV — a three-amino-acid fragment from alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone — for its ability to shut down inflammatory signaling in the gut, lungs, and skin.
*Reviewed by PeptideJournal.org Research Team | Last updated: February 2026*
*How peptide-based PET imaging agents are rewriting the rules of cancer detection — from neuroendocrine tumors to prostate cancer, and what comes next.*
Most peptide drugs share a structural weakness: their linear shape leaves them exposed to enzymes that chop them apart within minutes of entering the body.
**Reviewed by PeptideJournal.org Editorial Team | Updated February 2026**
For decades, cancer treatment meant carpet-bombing the body with chemotherapy and hoping the tumor took more damage than the patient.
Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) -- formerly called NASH -- affects an estimated 5% of adults worldwide, and until very recently, there was exactly one FDA-approved drug for it.
When someone walks into an emergency room struggling to breathe, the cause isn't always obvious. Is it heart failure? A lung infection? Anxiety? For decades, doctors relied on stethoscopes, chest X-rays, and clinical intuition to figure it out. Then came a simple blood test that changed everything.
In 1977, a team of Swiss researchers led by Schoenenberger and Monnier isolated a small peptide from the blood of sleeping rabbits. When they injected it into the brains of awake rabbits, the animals' EEG readings shifted toward slow-wave delta activity — the deep, restorative phase of sleep.
Peptide research has shaped modern medicine in ways that few other scientific fields can match. From the isolation of insulin in 1921 to the GLP-1 receptor agonists now prescribed to millions, a handful of landmark papers have redirected entire branches of biology, pharmacology, and clinical
For decades, getting peptides into the body meant one thing: needles. Subcutaneous injections remain the gold standard for systemic peptide delivery, and for good reason — bioavailability is high, dosing is precise, and the science is well understood. But needles come with baggage.
Polycystic ovary syndrome affects somewhere between 6% and 20% of women of reproductive age, depending on which diagnostic criteria you use.
For the roughly 40% of people with type 2 diabetes who also develop chronic kidney disease, treatment options have long been limited to a familiar trio: blood pressure drugs that block the renin-angiotensin system, SGLT2 inhibitors, and the mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist finerenone.
Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) sits at the end of one of the most controversial treatment protocols in modern medicine.
Your gut harbors roughly 38 trillion bacteria — a population so large and metabolically active that some researchers call it an organ in its own right.
Most peptides do one thing well. BPC-157 appears to do dozens of things across nearly every organ system researchers have tested it in — from the gut lining where it was first discovered to the brain, heart, liver, and musculoskeletal tissues.
For years, the GLP-1 receptor agonist story was defined by needles. Semaglutide, tirzepatide, liraglutide — all delivered by subcutaneous injection.
If you have spent any time reading about hair loss treatments beyond the usual minoxidil-and-finasteride advice, you have probably encountered copper peptides.
In 1973, biochemist Loren Pickart was studying why young human blood serum could make old liver tissue behave young again. The answer turned out to be a tiny molecule — just three amino acids bound to a copper ion — that would spend the next five decades rewriting what we know about wound healing.
Few cosmetic peptides have been studied as thoroughly as Matrixyl. Since French biotech firm Sederma introduced palmitoyl pentapeptide-4 (pal-KTTKS) in 2000, it has become one of the most widely used anti-aging ingredients in the skincare industry.
For decades, vaccines have been built around weakened or killed pathogens — whole organisms presented to the immune system so it can learn to fight them.
Somewhere between 2025 and 2050, antibiotic-resistant bacteria will directly kill an estimated 39 million people — roughly three deaths every minute. That projection, published in *The Lancet* by the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project, is not speculative hand-wringing.
Every time you exercise, your body launches a coordinated chemical response involving dozens of peptide hormones. Growth hormone surges. Insulin shifts. Endorphins flood the bloodstream.
In 1997, geneticists Se-Jin Lee and Alexandra McPherron at Johns Hopkins knocked out a single gene in mice and watched them grow roughly twice the normal amount of muscle. The gene they silenced coded for a protein called myostatin — and its discovery opened an entirely new chapter in muscle biology.
Peptides are powerful molecules, but they're also fragile ones. A single mishandled vial, a few hours at the wrong temperature, or the wrong reconstitution solvent can turn a potent research compound into an expensive pile of degraded fragments.
For decades, the phrase "oral peptide" was treated as a contradiction. Peptides are proteins. The GI tract exists to digest proteins. Asking a peptide to survive that journey intact is like asking a snowflake to survive a furnace.
AOD-9604 is one of the most interesting cautionary tales in peptide drug development. Designed to capture the fat-burning properties of human growth hormone without its side effects, this 16-amino acid fragment showed striking results in obese mice.
Tesamorelin is the only FDA-approved drug for reducing excess visceral abdominal fat in adults with HIV-associated lipodystrophy. Sold under the brand name Egrifta, it earned that approval in November 2010 based on two large Phase III trials involving more than 800 patients.
On June 21, 2019, the FDA approved bremelanotide -- marketed as Vyleesi -- for the treatment of hypoactive sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women.
*A study-by-study review of the evidence behind thymosin beta-4's wound repair potential — from rat models to Phase II human trials.*
A detailed analysis of the preclinical and clinical evidence behind Semax's brain-protective effects — from ischemic stroke to Alzheimer's disease models.
That approval was based on a series of clinical trials conducted exclusively in Russia. These trials compared Selank to established benzodiazepines, tested it as an adjunctive therapy, and examined its neurophysiological effects using EEG monitoring.
When researchers talk about growth hormone (GH) optimization through peptides, one pairing comes up more than any other: CJC-1295 and ipamorelin.
Epitalon is a synthetic four-amino-acid peptide (Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly) that activates telomerase and extends telomere length in human cells. Developed by Russian gerontologist Vladimir Khavinson in the 1980s, it has been studied for over 25 years across cell culture, animal, and small human trials.
LL-37 is the only cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide produced in the human body. It kills bacteria, disrupts biofilms, fights viruses, and shapes your immune response — all at the same time. For two decades, researchers have been trying to turn this natural defense molecule into a usable drug.
Thymosin alpha-1 (Ta1) is one of the most clinically tested peptides in existence. More than 11,000 subjects have been enrolled in over 30 clinical trials. Post-marketing surveillance covers more than 600,000 treated patients.
You just saw a headline: "Groundbreaking peptide reverses aging in mice." Your first instinct might be excitement. Your second should be skepticism.
The past eighteen months have been among the most consequential in peptide science. A triple-agonist injectable posted the largest weight-loss numbers ever recorded in a Phase 3 trial. The FDA approved the first-ever drug targeting mitochondria.
*Reviewed by PeptideJournal Science Team | Updated February 2026*
If you've spent any time searching for wrinkle treatments, you've probably seen argireline marketed as "Botox in a bottle." The pitch is seductive: skip the needles, skip the doctor's office, and just smooth on a serum that relaxes your facial muscles the same way Botox does.
The global peptide therapeutics market is projected to surpass $49 billion in 2026, and a growing share of that figure comes from your bathroom shelf. Cosmetic peptides have gone from niche lab curiosity to mainstream skincare staple in under two decades.
When millions of people start taking a new class of medication, one of the first questions that comes up — and should come up — is whether these drugs cause cancer.
People taking [semaglutide](/peptides/semaglutide-complete-pharmacology-guide/) for weight loss or diabetes have been saying something unexpected for years now: they don't just want less food — they want less alcohol, fewer cigarettes, and in some cases, less of whatever substance they'd been
Few topics in neuroscience have generated as much excitement -- and as much confusion -- as the idea that diabetes drugs might protect the brain from degenerative diseases.
For years, diabetes medications were judged by one metric: how well they lowered blood sugar. That changed in 2008, when the FDA began requiring cardiovascular outcome trials (CVOTs) for new diabetes drugs -- and what followed has reshaped not just diabetes care, but cardiology itself.
Getting a peptide into the body is only half the problem. Getting it to work once it arrives — that is the real challenge.
From early Phase I trials at the University of Arizona to dozens of post-market case reports across three continents, the safety profile of Melanotan II has been assembled piece by piece over thirty years.
*What the clinical trial data actually shows about ibutamoren after months and years of use — including the study that was stopped early.*
A detailed breakdown of the phase 2 clinical trial data for retatrutide — the first triple-receptor agonist to produce up to 24.2% weight loss in 48 weeks.
In 1973, a biochemist named Loren Pickart noticed something unexpected. When he exposed liver cells from older donors to blood plasma from younger people, those aged cells started behaving like young ones again.
The SURMOUNT program is the clinical trial backbone behind [tirzepatide](/peptides/tirzepatide-dual-gipglp-1-agonist-profile/) (marketed as Zepbound for weight management and Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes).
The STEP (Semaglutide Treatment Effect in People with obesity) program is one of the largest clinical trial programs ever conducted for an anti-obesity medication.
BPC-157 (Body Protection Compound-157) has generated enormous interest as a healing peptide — and enormous frustration among researchers waiting for proper human data.