Interest in Peptides is Exploding

Joe Rogan uses BPC-157 for injuries. Jennifer Aniston does weekly peptide injections for her flawless, glossy skin. TikTok biohackers are injecting something called the "Wolverine Stack", and random friends on Instagram are recommending peptides (illegally, might I add). Stacy's mom is on a GLP-1 (a peptide!), and peptides have even made it into the New York Times!

Most of the coverage I've seen on peptides falls into one of two camps. There's the breathless hype camp ("peptides cure everything!") and the skeptic camp ("unproven chemicals being pushed by influencers!").

My stance is that peptides are neither a panacea nor a useless fad. Rather, they are ushering in a new paradigm for biotech: one that will be massively disruptive to Big Pharma, and usher in a whole new crop of biotech winners.

https://x.com/FEhrsam/status/1998774053465723215

What are Peptides?

But before we get into that - what exactly are peptides?

Peptides are short chains of amino acids. They're the same building blocks your body already uses to make proteins - just shorter chains. If proteins are sentences, peptides are words.

Peptides are signaling molecules, little messengers that tell your cells what to do. Insulin, the hormone that regulates your blood sugar? That's a peptide. GLP-1, the hormone that Ozempic is based on? Also a peptide (one your gut produces after you eat).

The key thing to understand is that your body already makes peptides, already has receptors for them, already knows how to break them down. When your body metabolizes a peptide, the byproducts are just amino acids: the same stuff you get from eating a steak or broccoli.

Many influencers preach the benefits of peptides for various conditions. Some popular ones include:

• BPC-157 for tissue repair (your body makes BPC naturally in your gastric juices, and it's involved in gut healing and tissue repair)
• TB-500 (a fragment of a protein called thymosin beta-4 that's involved in recovery and inflammation)
• GLP-1s for weight loss and lowering inflammation. This class of peptide has exploded in light of the Ozempic crazy that's recently swept the nation
• CJC-1295 (releases growth hormone)
• GHK-Cu (skin and collagen growth. This one actually has some decent human data)
• Semax (a cognitive peptide that's been prescribed in Russia for decades)
• …and about a thousand others.

Though anecdotal and (mostly Soviet-era) evidence for peptides is strong, the body of research on these compounds is fairly thin. Most research is in rodents and cell cultures, not humans. But why that evidence base is so thin, and why these (potentially very effective) compounds have been overlooked, is a question worth asking.

The answer has a lot to do with how Big Pharma makes money.

In 1956, a pharma company called Richardson-Merrell introduced a new drug called thalidomide to help pregnant women with morning sickness. Like many pharmaceuticals, this was a novel small molecule: a compound no human body had ever encountered in history. Within years, 10,000+ children were born with birth defects linked directly to the drug, and Thalidomide then became the most infamous drug disaster in history.

You'd think we would have learned something fundamental from that tragedy. And in some ways we did: thalidomide led directly to the modern FDA approval process. Yet in a deeper sense, the basic approach to drug development - find a novel molecule that human biology has never seen, patent it, and introduce it at scale - remains the default playbook of the pharmaceutical industry to this day.

Here's how it works:

1. Find a new compound. It has to be new, because you can't patent something the body already makes.
2. Run it through trials and hope the side effects aren't too catastrophic.
3. Introduce this evolutionary stranger into hundreds of millions of human bodies, and monitor closely for whatever happens next.
4. Assuming all looks good, slap a patent on that cute, novel lil molecule.

I've written before how novel chemicals like seed oils, pesticides, PFAS and other compounds wreak havoc precisely because our bodies never evolved to handle them.

Well, the same logic applies to pharmaceuticals! Unfortunately for us, the molecules most likely to be novel and patentable are also those most likely to be foreign to human biology.

This is a structural feature of the business model: our current system incentivizes the search for alien chemicals, and hopes to catch any side effects during expensive, long, and large clinical trials.

Peptides flip this dynamic on its head. Research shows peptide-based drugs are actually ~2x more likely to be approved in clinical trials vs totally novel small-molecule approaches. Not because peptide researchers are smarter, but because they're working with evolutionary biology instead of against it.

So if peptides are safer and more effective, why hasn't pharma gone all-in on them?

Basically, because they can't patent them.

If the human body already makes a compound, it's not novel (and thus you can't patent it).

This is a death sentence for a business model built on 20-year patent monopolies that justify $2.6 billion in drug development costs (on average). Why would Pfizer spend billions developing a compound it can't exclusively own?

So Big Pharma does one of two things. They either ignore peptides entirely (see: the last 100 years) and continue the hunt for patentable small molecules. Or, they take a peptide, modify it just enough to be patentable, and sell it at pharma prices.

Which brings us to pharma's biggest blockbuster of the last 50 years: GLP-1s!

Not a doctor, but I would not recommend injecting on GLP-1s into one's wenis.

Semaglutide - the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy - is a slightly modified version of GLP-1, a hormone your intestines have been producing since birth. Novo Nordisk's scientists made some tweaks (technically, they swapped one amino acid and attached a fatty acid chain), and those changes + the injectable delivery mechanism to file for a patent.

Semaglutide is now one of the most successful drugs in pharma history, and Novo Nordisk briefly became the most valuable company in Europe (though some naughty employee failed to file the $600 Canadian patent extension… whoops!).

The biggest pharmaceutical blockbuster of the past decade is a tweaked version of something your body already makes. It's proof of concept that working with biology works. Pharma just had to alter it enough to own it.

The Monitoring Unlock

Patent law, in short, is why we lack clinical trials for peptides.

I'm not saying our current pharma paradigm has no value. Cancer chemotherapy, certain antibiotics, emergency medications… there are conditions where you genuinely need novel chemistry.

But for the vast landscape of chronic disease now consuming ~85% of our healthcare dollars? For these conditions, we should at least ask whether the "inject an alien compound into your body" approach is the best we can do.

Peptides, I would argue, are a new and better approach.

Now here's where this story takes a turn that most people covering peptides are completely missing.

The standard peptide objection is always "we don't have enough long-term human data." And fair enough: for many peptides, that's true.

Yes, we don't have tons of long-term human data. We do however, live in a time where we have more tools for early detection and monitoring than ever before. CGMs, biomarkers (thanks to companies like Function or Superpower), Prenuvo scans… all of these are tools you can use for early detection of potential side effects!

If you have severe wrist pain, today's system will basically tell you (1) sorry, you're screwed, but (2) we can do surgery or give you medication to manage the pain forever. Yay!

Alternatively, you could consider the Wolverine Stack: a peptide regimen that's meant to last 4-8 weeks, with close monitoring of how you feel and any potential side effects. Yes, some folks will warn you that some peptides (like BPC-157) can increase odds of cancer (though animal toxicity studies don't seem to find that). But if you have tools to detect potential growths early, and are only doing these interventions for a short period of time, well, the risk/reward just might be worth it.

Now, obviously, I'm not a doctor (just a humble broth merchant). And I'm not recommending you go out and buy any peptides that are "for research purposes only", today's chosen way to get around FDA regulations.

What I am suggesting is that - as they legalize, which is coming - peptides will become much more popular, and many of the "but no clinical trials" concerns can be addressed by early detection tools.

When you have better detection, you can afford to be more "risk on" with interventions like peptides, focused ultrasound, or drinking 1000 gallons of America's best bone broth daily.

The Counterarguments

I want to be clear about what I'm not saying here. I'm not saying every peptide being hawked on Instagram is safe and effective. Quite the opposite: the gray market is filled with Chinese peptides, inconsistent dosing, and zero quality control. "Peptide stacking" (combining multiple peptides) has zero clinical evidence behind it, and complex interactions that are completely unstudied in animals or humans.

I'm also not saying peptides are a replacement for diet and lifestyle. If you're injecting BPC-157 while still eating mostly ultra-processed sludge, sorry you're not gonna make it. A lot of the "deficiency" that peptides are addressing may actually be downstream of the same environmental and dietary problems I write about here - toxin exposure, metabolic dysfunction, nutrient-depleted food.

Peptides are also not without risk. These are signaling molecules, and there are valid concerns that some peptides can cause cancer or other conditions. They're powerful compounds that will impact your hormones and could have all sorts of other side effects. We are early and just don't know enough.

But here's where I land: the fact that the peptide market is messy and under-regulated doesn't mean the underlying approach is wrong. It means we've failed to invest in doing it right. We've spent trillions perfecting today's small-molecule approach, with research shaped by what's patentable rather than what's best for patients.

Where This Goes

The pharma paradigm is often more on the "don't die" side of things: don't die of heart disease (statins!), don't be depressed (SSRIs), don't have asthma.

Peptides are the opposite. They fall into a category I call "more life": more energy, better skin, less inflammation, less pain.

We're on the cusp of a fundamental shift in medicine, from reactive sick-care to proactive health optimization. The building blocks are emerging: better detection, cheaper diagnostics, AI monitoring, peptides... the tools to catch disease early are getting better every year.

But the incentive structures are fighting this future every step of the way. The entire healthcare-industrial complex - approaching 20% of GDP and climbing - is optimized for managing chronic disease, not preventing it.

The MAHA movement, the compounding pharmacy boom, the populist revolt against the medical establishment... these are all symptoms of people intuitively sensing that the current paradigm is broken. Something about a system that produces worse outcomes for each extra dollar we spend, that normalizes lifelong pharmaceutical dependency, that says the new food pyramid (and it's recommendation to eat real food) is scientifically questionable… something about that system deserves serious interrogation.

What I'd love to see is a world that combines the rigor of clinical trials with the biohacker/peptide approach. Real clinical trials for human enhancement therapies like peptides, and a better understanding of which peptides work, at what doses, for which conditions. A regulatory framework that doesn't treat "your body already makes this" as a disqualifying characteristic, but as a reason for more interest.

The tools are here. The science is emerging. And I suspect you'll hear a lot more about peptides and the way they're changing the healthcare system in the years to come.