The index

The approved melanotan. Same family as the tanning peptide people buy from research suppliers, but with an FDA approval, an implant, and a rare disease indication.

A breast cancer drug that men on testosterone use to control oestradiol, often for a problem they do not have and at doses that create a different one.

The only approved drug that works on desire in the brain rather than blood flow in the tissue. Different mechanism from Viagra, and a different problem.

A weekly GLP-1 approved for diabetes and never for obesity, with the unusual distinction of proving cardiovascular benefit in people who had not yet had a cardiac event.

Blocks both 5-alpha-reductase isoenzymes instead of one, regrows more hair than finasteride in head to head trials, and carries a half-life measured in weeks rather than hours.

The first GLP-1 agonist ever approved, derived from Gila monster venom, and now withdrawn from the US market for commercial reasons after twenty years.

The most effective approved treatment for male pattern hair loss, and the one with a side effect debate that has run for twenty years without resolving.

An approved fertility drug that found its real audience among men on testosterone trying not to become infertile, with dose-response trial data behind that exact use.

The daily GLP-1 that proved the class could treat obesity, now largely superseded by weekly drugs that work better and require a seventh of the injections.

The first GLP-1 and glucagon dual agonist approved for obesity anywhere in the world, licensed in China while the West is still running trials.

Approved IGF-1, and the reference point for what supervised IGF-1 therapy involves: meal timing, glucose monitoring, and hypoglycaemia as the dose-limiting toxicity.

One of the most prescribed drugs on earth, with sixty years of safety data and a longevity reputation resting on a trial that has still never been funded.

A 19th century dye that became the first synthetic drug, is still the antidote for methaemoglobinaemia, and is a potent MAO inhibitor that people take with antidepressants without knowing it.

An approved obstetric drug with an enormous popular reputation for trust and bonding, and a meta-analytic record for those effects that ranges from small to absent.

The single-receptor GLP-1 agonist that started the category. Best-characterised long-term safety data of any compound on this site, including cardiovascular outcomes.

An MC4 receptor agonist approved for obesity caused by specific broken genes, and a demonstration that the melanocortin system controls hunger directly.

The drug that created the category and still the reference every other PDE5 inhibitor gets described against. Shortest acting of the three here.

Actual growth hormone rather than something that asks the body to make it, approved for genuine deficiency, and a federal crime to distribute for anti-ageing.

The first FDA-approved mitochondria-targeted drug, approved in 2025 for a single ultra-rare disease after missing its endpoint in most of the trials that came before.

Long-acting PDE5 inhibitor. The 17-hour half-life makes daily low-dose use practical, which is why it is the one people build into a stack rather than take situationally.

Parathyroid hormone given as a daily pulse builds bone, while the same hormone elevated continuously destroys it. One of the sharpest dose-schedule effects in medicine.

The only FDA-approved growth hormone releasing factor analogue, and the only compound with trial evidence that it preferentially strips visceral fat.

Dual GIP / GLP-1 agonist and the most effective approved weight-loss drug currently on the market. Weekly injection with a real pharmacy supply chain.

Short-acting, highly selective PDE5 inhibitor. Sharper on and sharper off than tadalafil, with less visual disturbance than sildenafil.

A single molecule that is both a GLP-1 and an amylin agonist, doing in one peptide what CagriSema needs two for, and heading into phase 3.

An erythropoietin fragment stripped of the blood-building activity, with phase 2 data showing it regrows small nerve fibres in sarcoidosis. Among the better evidenced peptides here.

A topical hexapeptide sold as needle-free botulinum toxin, with real if modest clinical data on wrinkles and a mechanism that cannot plausibly work the way the marketing implies.

An antibody that blocks the myostatin pathway and adds muscle while removing fat. Its real future is probably as the thing you take alongside a GLP-1.

Long-acting amylin analogue that works through a satiety pathway separate from GLP-1 - which is why it combines with incretins instead of duplicating them.

Novo's answer to tirzepatide: two of its own drugs in one pen, reaching 22.7% weight loss in phase 3 and still not approved anywhere.

A pig brain protein hydrolysate used across dozens of countries for stroke and dementia, and the subject of a Cochrane review finding no benefit and more serious adverse events.

Selective oestrogen receptor modulator that raises testosterone by restarting your own axis instead of replacing it - which is why it preserves fertility where TRT does not.

The only growth hormone releasing peptide to earn a regulatory approval anywhere, and it was approved as a diagnostic test rather than a treatment.

The body's principal intracellular antioxidant, with decent oral trial data, no injectable evidence worth the name, and a skin-lightening market that has outrun both.

The hypothalamic hormone itself, with a four minute half-life that makes its popular use alongside testosterone pharmacologically odd.

The hormone that starts puberty, tested in proper randomised trials for low sexual desire in both men and women, with real results and no route to a pharmacy.

A tight junction regulator that reached phase 3 for coeliac disease and was stopped for futility, which makes it better evidenced than most gut peptides and also a negative result.

A collagen fragment with a fatty acid bolted on so it can cross skin, and one of the few cosmetic peptides with a randomised trial behind it.

An oral growth hormone secretagogue with real randomised data behind it. One trial was stopped early over a heart failure signal, which is the part people leave out.

The NAD precursor that stayed legal, has the most human trials in the category, and keeps raising NAD without clearly improving anything measurable.

The NAD precursor that the FDA banned from supplements in 2022 and quietly reinstated in 2025, with human trials that reliably raise NAD and much less reliably do anything else.

A Russian prescription nootropic sold in the West as a supplement it legally is not, with real trials in cognitive impairment and none in the healthy people taking it.

The first oral GLP-1 that works as a plain small molecule. No injection, no fridge, and no fasting window before you take it.

The only drug that has reliably extended lifespan in mice when started late in life, and an approved immunosuppressant, which is the tension nobody taking it for longevity fully resolves.

Triple GLP-1 / GIP / glucagon agonist producing the largest weight loss recorded in any obesity trial to date. Investigational - not approved anywhere.

A tuftsin analogue registered in Russia as an anxiolytic, with trial data comparing it favourably to a benzodiazepine and no Western replication whatsoever.

The GHRH fragment that was FDA-approved for a decade, then quietly withdrawn for commercial reasons rather than safety ones. That distinction still shapes its legal status.

A dietary polyamine with strong autophagy biology, good epidemiology, and a randomised trial in the exact population it is sold to that found nothing.

Dual glucagon and GLP-1 agonist from Boehringer Ingelheim. Same two-armed idea as retatrutide, minus the GIP arm, and much further through trials.

A failed Parkinson's drug that turned out to suppress appetite hard, producing some of the largest weight loss ever seen from a small molecule before the incretins arrived.

Approved in more than 35 countries for hepatitis B, and on the FDA's do-not-compound list in the United States. Same molecule, opposite verdicts.

The full 43 amino acid parent protein that TB-500 is a fragment of, and the only version of the two with a completed phase 3 human trial behind it.

A 28 amino acid signalling peptide that reached a randomised trial in critical COVID and narrowly missed its endpoint, now sold as a nasal spray for an entirely different set of claims.

A small molecule NNMT inhibitor with genuinely interesting metabolic biology in mice, sold as an oral fat loss capsule with no human trial of any kind behind it.

The one compound in this corner of the market that was properly tested as an obesity drug, in an adequately powered phase 2b trial, and failed it.

The most widely used healing peptide in the world, supported by a large rodent literature and zero completed randomised human trials.

GHRH analogue sold in two very different versions that share a name - one lasts half an hour, the other lasts a week, and confusing them ruins the protocol.

An angiotensin IV derivative that binds hepatocyte growth factor with picomolar affinity and grows dendritic spines in rodent brains. No human has ever been studied taking it.

Named for what it was supposed to do in 1977. Fifty years later there is still no randomised human trial showing it improves sleep.

A four amino acid peptide with striking longevity claims resting almost entirely on one Russian research group, and essentially no independent replication.

The senolytic with the best animal data and the most anticipated unpublished trials. Mayo has run them, enrolment is done, and nobody has seen the results.

A myostatin-binding protein that produced dramatic muscle growth in monkeys, by gene therapy. The injectable version sold online is a different proposition entirely.

Copper-binding tripeptide with forty years of topical research behind it - and essentially none behind the injectable form people are buying.

The oldest of the growth hormone releasing peptides and the hungriest. The appetite stimulation is not a side effect people tolerate, it is the reason some of them take it.

The most potent growth hormone releaser of the peptide secretagogues, and the one that desensitises its own receptor fastest. Its more interesting research is cardiac.

The tail end of the growth hormone molecule, sold on the premise that it burns fat without growth hormone's downsides. Its optimised drug version failed a proper phase 2b trial.

A peptide encoded inside mitochondrial DNA rather than the nucleus, with genuinely novel biology, higher levels in centenarians, and no human trial at all.

Engineered to slip past the binding proteins that normally restrain IGF-1, which extends its half-life roughly a hundredfold and removes the safety mechanism at the same time.

The most selective growth hormone secretagogue - it raises GH with minimal spillover into cortisol or prolactin, which is what separates it from older ghrelin mimetics.

Three-amino acid tail of α-MSH that carries the anti-inflammatory activity without the pigmentation effects. Used mostly for gut and skin inflammation.

The body's own broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptide, with real antibiofilm activity in the laboratory and a fundamental delivery problem in a live wound.

A peptide encoded by mitochondrial DNA rather than the nucleus. Genuinely novel biology, marketed far ahead of the human evidence.

A splice variant of IGF-1 released by damaged muscle, sold as a local repair signal, with a thin literature that includes at least one retraction.

A Russian nootropic peptide approved in Russia for stroke and cognitive disorders, and essentially unstudied everywhere else.

A pan-ERR agonist that reproduces some of exercise's metabolic signalling in mice. Genuinely novel pharmacology, zero human data, and sold anyway.

Synthetic fragment of thymosin beta-4, the standard partner to BPC-157 in healing stacks. Reviews of the literature find no randomised human trials in any musculoskeletal tissue.

A bovine thymus extract from the same Soviet research programme that produced epitalon, with decades of clinical reports and essentially no independent replication.

Tans you without much sun, and stimulates melanocytes while doing it. Case reports describe melanoma appearing on existing moles within months of starting.

Essential metabolic cofactor sold as an injectable. The oral precursors have a dozen randomised trials behind them; the injections have none.

BPC-157 with a different counterion and a new name, marketed as an upgrade on the strength of a stability claim that has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.