Research peptides: the research use only terms

Every product on this site is sold as a research compound with a Research Use Only label. None of the vials sold here is an approved medicine. That holds even where the same compound is in a medicine somewhere in the world. The product pages describe published research and nothing more.

• How much of anything to use, or how often.
• How to prepare a product or put it to use.
• What result to expect.
• Whether a product suits a health condition.

If you are looking for a medicine, a licensed doctor or pharmacist is the person to ask.

A few compounds in this catalog are also the active ingredient of approved medicines. The vials sold here are Research Use Only compounds, not those medicines. They are not approved for use in people.

• Tirzepatide: since 2022, the active ingredient in a prescription medicine approved in the United States.
• PT-141: the research name of bremelanotide. It was first approved in the United States in 2019 for low sexual desire in women before menopause.
• SS-31: the research name of elamipretide. It was given accelerated approval in the United States in 2025. The approval covers just one rare inherited disease, Barth syndrome, and rests on muscle strength.
• Thymosin Alpha-1: described in a 2007 review as a medicine in use in a number of countries.
• Retatrutide: an investigational compound. The newest papers found describe it as still in clinical trials.

Sources: PubMed 35830001 (Drugs, 2022). PubMed 31429064 (Drugs, 2019). PubMed 41335372 (Drugs, 2026). PubMed 17495242 (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2007).

Each product page lists a few PubMed papers and tags each one with its type. The type says more about a study than any single line can. Here is the count, from every paper a page lists or discusses.

• 21 of the 42 products have a study that gave people the compound itself.
• 5 have human work only on something close to the compound: a piece of a blend, its source molecule, or a combined product.
• 2 have only studies of natural levels in people.
• For 13, every record is a review, animal or cell work, or a lab analysis.
• For 1, our searches found no peer-reviewed study.

• Human trial: people received the compound. Look for a placebo group, the number of people and how long it ran. A pilot with 12 people and no placebo is the earliest kind of human study. The BPC-157 page lists one.
• Crossover: each person gets the compound and the placebo at different times, as in the PT-141 and SS-31 trials. The design suits small groups.
• Open phase: everyone gets the compound and knows it. The later part of the SS-31 Barth syndrome trial was an open phase with no placebo group. That is why that page flags it.
• Human, natural levels: a study that measured what people make on their own, as for MOTS-c and Humanin around exercise. Nobody was given the compound.
• Animal and cell studies: work in mice, rats or dishes. What happens there often fails to carry over to people, so a page built only on them says so.
• One research group: most papers may share an author. Examples are BPC-157 in Zagreb, and Epithalon and Vilon in Saint Petersburg. The page then names the group, so you can see whose work it is.
• What each line leaves out: benefits and effect sizes. Each line keeps to three things: the people in the study, its design and its measure. Null results and harms are reported as found. For the full numbers, open the PubMed record that the section links to.