1902
The word begins
Bayliss and Starling identify secretin in dog intestine — the first hormone ever described, and a peptide. Starling coins the term hormone from the Greek for 'to arouse'. Chemical messaging between organs stops being a theory.
1921
Insulin
Banting, Best, Macleod and Collip isolate insulin at the University of Toronto. In January 1922 fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson becomes the first person treated. A peptide turns a uniformly fatal disease into a managed one — still the single most important event in this field.
1923
Peptide chemistry gets a name
Emil Fischer had already coined 'peptide' and established that amino acids link through what he called the peptide bond. The vocabulary the whole industry uses is his.
1953
The first synthesis
Vincent du Vigneaud synthesises oxytocin — nine amino acids, the first polypeptide hormone ever made in a laboratory. He receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1955. Peptides become manufacturable rather than merely extractable.
1963
Solid-phase synthesis
Bruce Merrifield invents solid-phase peptide synthesis, anchoring the growing chain to a resin bead. What took months takes days. Merrifield receives the 1984 Nobel Prize. Essentially every research peptide sold today exists because of this method.
1970s
The hypothalamic hormones
Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally, in a famously bitter rivalry, isolate TRH, GnRH and somatostatin from hundreds of thousands of animal hypothalami. They share the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine. GnRH analogues become the basis of modern prostate cancer and fertility treatment.
1982
Biotechnology arrives
Recombinant human insulin (Humulin) is approved — the first genetically engineered medicine. Peptide and protein drugs no longer depend on animal pancreases.
1980s–1990s
The research-chemical era begins
GHRPs, BPC-157 and thymosin fragments emerge from academic labs. Sequences are published; the compounds are never taken through approval. This is the origin of nearly everything now sold as a 'research peptide' — real science that stopped halfway.
2005
The incretin era
Exenatide, derived from Gila monster venom, is approved for type 2 diabetes: the first GLP-1 receptor agonist. The mechanism that will reshape obesity medicine two decades later enters the clinic quietly.
2010s
Peptides go mainstream and gray at once
Compounding pharmacies and wellness clinics build a large business on unapproved peptides while the pharmaceutical industry produces liraglutide, semaglutide and tirzepatide. Two worlds, same molecule class, opposite standards of evidence.
2023
The FDA draws a line
In September the FDA places over a dozen peptides — BPC-157, ipamorelin, CJC-1295 and others — into Category 2 of the interim 503A bulks list, effectively barring them from compounding. Legal access to much of the category closes overnight.
2024
Nominations withdrawn
In September the FDA removes AOD-9604, CJC-1295, ipamorelin, thymosin α1 and Selank from Category 2 after their nominators withdraw. Removal from Category 2 is not permission — a distinction almost universally misreported.
2025
Approval for a mitochondrial peptide
Elamipretide (SS-31) is approved for Barth syndrome, a rare genetic cardiomyopathy. A peptide from the longevity research world crosses into approved medicine — for one narrow indication.
July 2026
The advisory committee breaks with its own scientists
On 23–24 July the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee reviews seven peptides. FDA staff scientists recommend against all seven in writing. The committee votes to recommend six — BPC-157, TB-500, KPV, MOTS-c, Semax and Epitalon — rejecting only emideltide (DSIP), 6–7. The votes are advisory and change nothing legally until rulemaking completes.
Why so much of this category stalled
A striking number of research peptides share one story: an academic group in the 1980s or 1990s published a
sequence and promising animal data, and nobody ever ran the human trial. That is not a conspiracy. Peptides are
expensive to develop, are often unpatentable once the sequence is public, degrade in the gut so they must be injected,
and have short half-lives. A compound with no patent protection and no oral route is a poor commercial prospect
no matter how good the rat data looks.
So the sequences sat in the literature, and a supply industry grew up around them selling the compound while
citing the animal work as though it were clinical evidence. When you read that something is “extensively studied,”
the question to ask is: studied in what species, and how many people?
What actually changed with GLP-1s
The incretin story is the counterexample, and it is worth understanding because it shows what the difference looks like.
Exenatide came from Gila monster venom in 2005. Liraglutide followed. Then semaglutide, and the SELECT trial with over
17,000 randomised participants showing a real reduction in cardiovascular events. Then tirzepatide, adding a second
receptor and roughly 20% mean weight reduction. These went through the full apparatus — phase 1, 2, 3, outcome trials,
post-marketing surveillance — which is precisely why they can make claims that BPC-157 cannot.
Same molecular class. Completely different standard of proof. That gap is what this site exists to show.
The regulatory whiplash of 2023 to 2026
September 2023 closed compounded access to much of the category. September 2024’s Category 2 removals were widely
and wrongly reported as re-legalisation — they were withdrawals of nomination, which leaves a substance with no
lawful compounding basis at all. April 2026 saw further removals and a scheduled review. July 2026 produced the
strangest result yet: FDA’s own scientists recommended against all seven peptides under review, and the advisory
committee recommended six anyway.
None of it is settled. Advisory votes are not rules; rulemaking takes eight to twenty-four months and can end
anywhere. Anyone telling you a peptide is “now FDA approved” because of the July vote has misread all three steps.