Body Protection Compound-157 (BPC-157)

Body Protection Compound-157 (BPC-157) is a short chain of 15 amino acids that its developers describe as a fragment of a larger protein they reported finding in human gastric juice. It has been studied for more than thirty years, almost entirely in rats and in cell cultures, and it is sold widely as an injectable “research” product, although no country has approved a medicine containing it. In 2026 it was at the centre of a U.S. regulatory dispute: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed that it not be placed on the list of ingredients pharmacies may use for compounding, its outside advisory committee voted the other way in July, and in October the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a draft interim policy under which it does not intend to act against certain compounders who prepare it. It is one of six peptides covered on the Peptides hub; the news of the policy is in the 14 November 2026 news article.

Table of Contents

  1. What Body Protection Compound-157 Is
  2. Where It Came From
  3. How It Is Thought to Work
  4. Laboratory and Animal Research
  5. Human Studies
  6. What the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Found
  7. The July 2026 Advisory Committee Vote
  8. The October 2026 Health and Human Services Interim Policy
  9. Safety Findings and Unknowns
  10. What Is Not Known
  11. Key Research Papers
  12. Connections
  13. Featured Videos

What Body Protection Compound-157 Is

A peptide is a short chain of amino acids, the same building blocks that make up proteins. Body Protection Compound-157 is a pentadecapeptide, meaning a chain of exactly 15 amino acids. In order, they are glycine, glutamic acid, proline, proline, proline, glycine, lysine, proline, alanine, aspartic acid, aspartic acid, alanine, glycine, leucine and valine. Four of the fifteen are proline. The October 2026 federal policy prints the sequence in the standard three-letter code as “H-Gly-Glu-Pro-Pro-Pro-Gly-Lys-Pro-Ala-Asp-Asp-Ala-Gly-Leu-Val-OH,” with the molecular formula C62H98N16O22 and a molecular weight of 1,419.54 grams per mole for the peptide itself.

Its developers at the University of Zagreb described it in 1993 as a 15-amino-acid fragment of a much larger gastric juice protein they named BPC (for “body protection compound”), a fragment “thought to be essential for its activity.” The material used in research and sold today is made synthetically: a 2026 systematic review calls it “a synthetic pentadecapeptide,” and a research team in China described setting up a solid-phase chemical synthesis process before testing it in animals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 2026 briefing describes it as a peptide “reported to be comprised of 15 amino acids” and notes that naming in the submitted documents was inconsistent.

Free base and acetate: two forms, two regulatory substances

Peptides can be made and sold in more than one chemical form. The free base is the peptide on its own. The acetate is the same peptide paired with acetate, the charged form of acetic acid (the acid in vinegar), which is how many peptides come out of purification; the policy writes it as the peptide formula followed by “·xCH3COOH,” meaning an unstated number of acetate units per peptide. The active peptide is the same, but the two powders differ in weight, behaviour and the tests needed to confirm what they contain. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration treats each form as a separate bulk drug substance, the raw active ingredient, usually a powder, from which a pharmacy prepares a capsule, injection or cream. For that reason its advisory committee voted on the free base and the acetate separately, and the October 2026 policy covers only the acetate.

Where It Came From

The founding paper, published in 1993 in the Journal de Physiologie (Paris) by Sikirić and colleagues of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Zagreb medical faculty in Croatia, set out a “stomach-stress-organoprotection hypothesis.” The authors proposed that the stomach starts a protective response to stress throughout the body, and reported that the peptide protected many organs in several animal species at very low doses, given by injection into the abdomen, into the stomach or directly onto tissue. They reported “no toxicity” in those experiments and described the peptide as a possible prototype of a new class of “organoprotective” drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 2026 briefing likewise dates the first description in the literature to 1993.

Through the 2000s the Zagreb group's papers described the peptide as being “in clinical trials” for inflammatory bowel disease with a Croatian pharmaceutical company, under the development codes PL-10, PLD-116 and PL 14736. A 2007 paper from the group calls it “safe in clinical trials for inflammatory bowel disease.” When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reviewed the record in 2026, it identified two short enema studies in people, and the one controlled trial among them was available only as a meeting abstract (see Human Studies). According to the agency's briefing, no country has approved a medicine containing the peptide.

A literature from one main research group

Most of the published research comes from the Zagreb group. A PubMed search on 14 November 2026 for the peptide's name returned 238 records, and 176 of them list Sikirić P as an author. A 2019 review from Loughborough University in England noted that “over the past two decades, only a handful of research groups have performed in-depth studies regarding this peptide.” Independent work does exist: teams at Chang Gung University in Taiwan studied tendon cells and blood vessels, a team in Xi'an, China, ran animal toxicology and pharmacokinetic studies, and orthopaedic groups in the United States and England have written systematic reviews.

How It Is Thought to Work

Every mechanism below comes from cell-culture and animal experiments. None has been confirmed in people, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 2026 briefing states that the peptide's dose-response relationships, molecular targets and mechanism of action had not been established.

Growing new blood vessels is part of healing, but it is also something tumours depend on. A 2026 review of unregulated injectable peptides lists “pathological angiogenesis” and carcinogenesis among the potential risks of this group of products. That is a concern drawn from how the substances act, not a harm reported in a study of Body Protection Compound-157 (see Safety Findings and Unknowns).

Laboratory and Animal Research

The animal literature is large and almost uniformly positive. A 2025 systematic review of the musculoskeletal research found 544 articles published from 1993 to 2024; of the 36 that met its criteria, 35 were preclinical and 1 was a clinical study. Most experiments used rats, with the peptide injected into the abdominal cavity or given in drinking water, often at microgram- or nanogram-per-kilogram doses.

Stomach and bowel

The peptide was first studied as a stomach-protecting agent. The 1993 founding paper described protection against many kinds of stomach and organ injury in animals. In a 2007 rat study, injections of 10 micrograms or 10 nanograms per kilogram after surgery improved the healing of a joint sewn between two loops of small intestine, measured by appearance under the microscope and by how much pressure the join could take before leaking. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 2026 briefing summarised the rat studies as showing protective effects on gut and liver injury, while noting that the dose-response relationships and mechanism had not been worked out. Background on the bowel conditions involved is on the Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Ulcerative Colitis pages.

Tendon, ligament and muscle

In a 2003 Zagreb study, rats had their right Achilles tendon cut 5 millimetres above the heel and received daily injections of 10 micrograms, 10 nanograms or 10 picograms per kilogram, or salt water. Treated rats walked better on a daily function score, and their healing tendons were stronger and stiffer in mechanical testing, with more collagen formation and a smaller defect. In laboratory dishes, the peptide on its own did not change the growth of tendon cells but counteracted a growth-blocking chemical, 4-hydroxynonenal. A 2025 systematic review summarised the preclinical models as showing improved function, structure and strength after muscle, tendon, ligament and bone injuries. A 2019 review noted that most studies “have been performed on small rodent models” and that the peptide's efficacy had yet to be confirmed in humans. Related conditions are on the Achilles Tendinopathy and Tendinitis pages.

How animals' bodies handle it

A 2022 study from Xi'an, China, gave the peptide to rats and beagle dogs by vein and by muscle injection. The intact peptide had an elimination half-life of under 30 minutes. After a muscle injection, about 14% to 19% reached the blood in rats and 45% to 51% in dogs. Using a radioactively labelled version, the team found it was quickly broken down into small peptide fragments and single amino acids and was cleared mainly in urine and bile. The authors described this as the first analysis of the peptide's pharmacokinetics (how the body absorbs, distributes and clears a drug). No comparable human data exist: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found no human pharmacokinetic data for the oral, injected, nasal or skin routes.

Human Studies

Human research is very thin. A systematic review published in October 2026, which searched three databases and a trials registry up to 1 June 2026, found three human studies with 30 participants in all. All three share the same first author and were run at private clinics, none had a comparison group, and the reviewers judged every one to be of poor methodological quality, rating the overall certainty of the evidence “very low.” The authors concluded that clinical use in humans is not supported outside ethically approved, regulated, high-quality clinical trials.

No human study of the peptide in tendon or ligament injury, the use for which it is most often promoted, has been published. A 2025 systematic review of the orthopaedic literature found “no clinical safety data,” and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found no clinical studies of the peptide in Crohn's disease, celiac disease or tendonitis, three of the uses it had been nominated for.

What the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Found

Section 503A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act lets a licensed pharmacist in a state-licensed pharmacy or federal facility, or a licensed physician, compound (prepare) a medicine for an individual patient's prescription without the drug going through approval. A bulk drug substance can be used under section 503A only if it has a United States Pharmacopeia or National Formulary monograph, is part of an approved drug, or appears on a list the agency builds by regulation, the “503A Bulks List.” Body Protection Compound-157 meets none of the three. The full background is on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Review of Compounded Peptides page.

The safety-risk category

For about two and a half years the peptide sat in the agency's “Category 2,” a list of nominated substances for which the agency “has identified significant safety risks relating to the use of these substances in compounding.” The October 2026 federal policy states that it was there “from September 2023 until April 22, 2026.” Its entry on the agency's Category 2 page, now in a table of substances “nominated but withdrawn,” still states that compounded drugs containing it “may pose risk for immunogenicity for certain routes of administration” and “may have complexities with regard to peptide-related impurities,” and that the agency “lacks sufficient information to know whether the drug would cause harm when administered to humans.” Immunogenicity is the ability of a substance to provoke an immune reaction, such as antibodies against the peptide; peptides that clump together or carry closely related manufacturing impurities can make such a reaction more likely.

The 2026 briefing, criterion by criterion

Although the nominations had been withdrawn, the agency evaluated both forms “on its own initiative” for the July 2026 advisory committee meeting (briefing document). The peptide had been nominated as oral capsules, injections, nasal spray, rectal suppositories and other forms, for ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, celiac disease and tendonitis. The agency evaluated only ulcerative colitis, citing a lack of information on the other uses. It weighed the four criteria set by a 2019 rule:

The briefing concluded that “a balancing of the criteria weighs against” placing either form on the 503A Bulks List, and the agency's written proposal for each form was that it “NOT be included on the 503A Bulks List.”

Status outside the United States

The agency's briefing states that no approved product containing the peptide exists in any country and that it is not in the European, Japanese or International Pharmacopoeias. The 2025 orthopaedic systematic review states that its use is banned in professional sports. In 2017 researchers in Salt Lake City, Utah, reported identifying the peptide in confiscated vials and developed a urine test able to detect it at 0.1 nanograms per millilitre, together with a breakdown product, for drug-testing purposes.

The July 2026 Advisory Committee Vote

The agency's Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, a panel of outside experts, met on 23 and 24 July 2026 to consider seven peptides. Body Protection Compound-157 came first, on 23 July, for ulcerative colitis. The committee voted on two questions: whether to place the free base on the list, and whether to place the acetate on it. The chair explained that a yes vote meant recommending that the agency place the substance on the 503A Bulks List.

Both counts were read aloud “for the record” by the agency's Designated Federal Officer during the agency's own broadcast of the meeting, whose addresses are given in the agency's webcast information document. The tallies add up to the 15 voting members the final meeting roster lists as eligible for this topic. As of 14 November 2026 the agency had posted no minutes, summary or transcript of the meeting, so the broadcast remains the record of the vote.

Advice against the agency's own staff proposal

The committee's majority went against the written proposal of the agency's staff, which was that neither form be listed. The vote is advice, not a decision. The agency's meeting page says advisory committees “make non-binding recommendations,” which the agency “generally follows” but “is not legally bound” to follow. During the meeting an agency participant said, according to the broadcast's automatic captions: “So we made recommendations that you heard today and that were in the memos, but those weren't final decisions. So the final decisions would come out through rulemaking.” Another said the agency had no deadline for starting that rulemaking.

Between the meeting and 14 November 2026 the agency published no proposed or final rule on the peptide, and its Category 2 page, still dated 22 April 2026, kept the peptide in the withdrawn table with its safety notes unchanged. The same committee voted 8–6–1 for both forms of Thymosin Beta-4 Fragment (TB-500) and Lysine-Proline-Valine (KPV), and recommended against only one of the seven peptides, emideltide (delta sleep-inducing peptide). All the votes are compared on the Peptides hub.

The October 2026 Health and Human Services Interim Policy

On 30 October 2026 the Federal Register published a notice of availability for the “Enforcement Discretion Policy Regarding 503A Compounding Using Certain Peptide Bulk Drug Substances” (91 Federal Register 68526, docket HHS-OASH-2026-0496). It had been filed for public inspection on 28 October. The notice calls it a “draft” and also “this interim policy”; the policy document itself uses only “interim.” The notice is signed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services; the policy document carries no signature or date, and neither states an effective date. The full policy is described on the peptide compounding enforcement discretion page.

Enforcement discretion means a government agency states that it does not intend to take action against certain activity that it could act against under the law. The policy says that, until each peptide is addressed in a final rule, the department “does not intend to take action” against a state-licensed pharmacy, federal facility or licensed physician compounding with one of six listed peptides, when ten conditions are all met. Body Protection Compound-157 is first on the list; the others are Epitalon, Lysine-Proline-Valine, Mitochondrial Open Reading Frame of the 12S rRNA-c (MOTS-c), Semax and Thymosin Beta-4 Fragment.

What it covers for this peptide

The conditions in plain words

  1. The peptide is on the policy's list (Appendix A).
  2. It has the identity and route limits set out in Appendix B.
  3. The raw powder comes from a facility registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with a valid certificate of analysis showing tests for identity, purity, strength and contaminants such as bacterial endotoxins, heavy metals, microbes and impurities.
  4. The original manufacturer is registered, follows current good manufacturing practice, and is named with its address on the certificate; a reseller has to have checked the manufacturer and its certificate.
  5. The compounder reports serious adverse events, whether or not they seem drug-related, and product quality problems to the agency's MedWatch program and to the states involved, along with what was compounded and from whose raw material.
  6. The label reads “This is a compounded drug product. Not for resale.”
  7. The product contains only one listed active ingredient, so that side effects can be traced to a single substance.
  8. Oral forms carry the absorption documentation described above.
  9. The only device packaged with the product is a syringe cleared by the agency.
  10. All other legal requirements still apply, including a prescription for an individual patient and the ban on preparing drugs under insanitary conditions.

What it does not do

The reasons the policy gives

The policy states that the advisory committee “voted in favor of inclusion,” and that the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research “recommended against listing either form.” It gives three reasons for including this peptide anyway: that historical use “is now documented and quantified”; that the characterization record has changed because lot-specific certificates from registered facilities now supply test results the agency had found missing; and that the policy's conditions “address the risks through lot-level testing,” single-ingredient products and adverse event reporting. More broadly, it says the policy “will discourage the continued, widespread use of certain research-use-only peptides supplied by foreign manufacturers” and offer patients “a more controlled alternative.” The policy cites no named adverse event or usage data set.

Status on 14 November 2026

Comments closed at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on 13 November 2026, two weeks after publication. The Federal Register's records counted about 289 comments received, of which 115 had been posted publicly on the government's regulations website. No final version of the policy and no statement about it on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's website had been found, and the peptide was still not on the 503A Bulks List.

Safety Findings and Unknowns

Reports to the agency

Voluntary reports like these cannot show how often a problem happens or prove that the product caused it.

Animal toxicology

A 2020 preclinical safety study from Xi'an, China, tested the peptide in mice, rats, rabbits and dogs. Single doses produced no test-related effects. In repeated-dose testing in dogs, the only finding was a drop in the kidney marker creatinine at 2 milligrams per kilogram, which reversed two weeks after dosing stopped. Local irritation was mild, and no genetic or embryo-fetal toxicity was found. The authors wrote that these data contributed to starting a clinical study that was then under way. Animal toxicology does not establish safety in people, particularly for long or repeated use.

What the human studies can and cannot show

The human reports described above recorded no serious or treatment-related adverse events, but they are few and small: the largest, the 53-person enema trial, exists only as a meeting abstract, follow-up lasted days to months, and the three published studies had no comparison groups. Studies that small cannot detect uncommon side effects, delayed effects or immune reactions. A 2025 systematic review concluded that “adverse effects are possible due to unregulated manufacturing, contamination, or unknown clinical safety.”

Products sold for “research use”

The peptide is widely sold online labelled “for research use only.” The October 2026 policy describes research-use-only peptides from foreign manufacturers as posing a safety risk to patients in the United States. A 2026 review of unregulated injectable peptides lists product contamination, manufacturing impurities and inaccurate dosing among the risks of this market, along with the theoretical concerns about abnormal blood-vessel growth and cancer. In August 2026 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to five online peptide sellers, finding that products labelled “research use only” were intended for human use; those five letters did not name Body Protection Compound-157. No published laboratory survey of the content and purity of Body Protection Compound-157 products sold online was found in PubMed when this page was written.

What Is Not Known

Decisions about unapproved and compounded medicines belong with a clinician who knows the person's history and what the evidence does and does not show.

Key Research Papers

  1. Sikirić P, Petek M, Rucman R, Seiwerth S, Grabarević Z, Rotkvić I, et al. A new gastric juice peptide, BPC. An overview of the stomach-stress-organoprotection hypothesis and beneficial effects of BPC. J Physiol Paris. 1993;87(5):313-27. PubMed PMID: 8298609
  2. Staresinic M, Sebecic B, Patrlj L, Jadrijevic S, Suknaic S, Perovic D, et al. Gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 accelerates healing of transected rat Achilles tendon and in vitro stimulates tendocytes growth. J Orthop Res. 2003;21(6):976-83. PubMed PMID: 14554208
  3. Vuksic T, Zoricic I, Brcic L, Sever M, Klicek R, Radic B, et al. Stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 in trials for inflammatory bowel disease (PL-10, PLD-116, PL14736, Pliva, Croatia) heals ileoileal anastomosis in the rat. Surg Today. 2007;37(9):768-77. PubMed PMID: 17713731
  4. Chang CH, Tsai WC, Lin MS, Hsu YH, Pang JH. The promoting effect of pentadecapeptide BPC 157 on tendon healing involves tendon outgrowth, cell survival, and cell migration. J Appl Physiol. 2011;110(3):774-80. PubMed PMID: 21030672
  5. Chang CH, Tsai WC, Hsu YH, Pang JH. Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 enhances the growth hormone receptor expression in tendon fibroblasts. Molecules. 2014;19(11):19066-77. PubMed PMID: 25415472
  6. Hsieh MJ, Liu HT, Wang CN, Huang HY, Lin Y, Ko YS, et al. Therapeutic potential of pro-angiogenic BPC157 is associated with VEGFR2 activation and up-regulation. J Mol Med (Berl). 2017;95(3):323-333. PubMed PMID: 27847966
  7. Xu C, Sun L, Ren F, Huang P, Tian Z, Cui J, et al. Preclinical safety evaluation of body protective compound-157, a potential drug for treating various wounds. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2020;114:104665. PubMed PMID: 32334036
  8. He L, Feng D, Guo H, Zhou Y, Li Z, Zhang K, et al. Pharmacokinetics, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of body-protective compound 157, a potential drug for treating various wounds, in rats and dogs. Front Pharmacol. 2022;13:1026182. PubMed PMID: 36588717
  9. Cox HD, Miller GD, Eichner D. Detection and in vitro metabolism of the confiscated peptides BPC 157 and MGF R23H. Drug Test Anal. 2017;9(10):1490-1498. PubMed PMID: 28035768
  10. Lee E, Padgett B. Intra-Articular Injection of BPC 157 for Multiple Types of Knee Pain. Altern Ther Health Med. 2021;27(4):8-13. PubMed PMID: 34324435
  11. Lee E, Walker C, Ayadi B. Effect of BPC-157 on Symptoms in Patients with Interstitial Cystitis: A Pilot Study. Altern Ther Health Med. 2024;30(10):12-17. PubMed PMID: 39325560
  12. Lee E, Burgess K. Safety of Intravenous Infusion of BPC157 in Humans: A Pilot Study. Altern Ther Health Med. 2025;31(5):20-24. PubMed PMID: 40131143
  13. Gwyer D, Wragg NM, Wilson SL. Gastric pentadecapeptide body protection compound BPC 157 and its role in accelerating musculoskeletal soft tissue healing. Cell Tissue Res. 2019;377(2):153-159. PubMed PMID: 30915550
  14. Vasireddi N, Hahamyan H, Salata MJ, Karns M, Calcei JG, Voos JE, et al. Emerging Use of BPC-157 in Orthopaedic Sports Medicine: A Systematic Review. HSS J. 2025;21(4):485-495. PubMed PMID: 40756949
  15. Poolton JT, Minett J, Kazmi A. Human evidence for BPC-157 in orthopaedic and regenerative medicine: a systematic review of efficacy and safety. Acta Orthop Belg. 2026;92(3). PubMed PMID: 42885452
  16. Moiz A, O'Keefe EL, O'Keefe JH. Dangers of Injectable Peptides and Other Unregulated “Biohacking” Drugs. Mo Med. 2026;123(4):337-343. PubMed PMID: 42757290

PubMed Topic Searches

  1. PubMed: Body Protection Compound-157
  2. PubMed: Body Protection Compound-157 and tendon healing
  3. PubMed: Body Protection Compound-157 safety in humans
  4. PubMed: peptide drugs, immunogenicity and impurities

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