Creams and dissolvable strips made from unapproved peptides are circulating like party hors d'oeuvres across San Francisco's wellness scene, riding a new federal policy that lets pharmacies compound them before regulators sign off.
Last week, tuxedoed hosts worked a crowd aboard the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien, a World War II Liberty ship docked on the city's Embarcadero, offering samples of GHK-Cu cream and sublingual strips carrying BPC-157 and TB-500. None of the three is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for human use, and the strips arrived in foil packets stamped "Warning: For research use only" in tiny print.
The gathering landed just after a major shift in Washington. On Oct. 28, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an enforcement discretion policy saying it will decline to act against pharmacies that compound six peptides - BPC-157, TB-500, KPV, epitalon, Semax and MOTS-c - as long as they meet manufacturing and reporting rules, until the FDA issues a final rule.
Almost none of that science involves people. The vast majority of research on the six now-permitted peptides has been conducted in animals or isolated cells and tissues, and there is no published evidence that BPC-157 or TB-500 work when absorbed under the tongue. TB-500 is broken down by digestive enzymes before it can reach the bloodstream.
The reversal carries fingerprints from the top. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a self-described peptide enthusiast, pledged to end the government's "aggressive suppression" of the compounds, and an FDA committee in July defied its own scientists to recommend allowing the six to be compounded. Legal scholars and former FDA attorneys argue the move lets companies profit without proving their products work, and warn that routing the policy through HHS rather than the FDA signals lingering scientific objections.
The commercial machine is already running. Afterglow Science, launched earlier this year, sells its Wolverine Blend strips for $200 a box of 30 or $60 for a pouch of seven, and has directed 10 percent of online orders since early September toward peptide research - $829 as of Nov. 10. Its founder concedes the science is unsettled: "The real answer is, we don't know."
Guests signed waivers acknowledging risk, though the forms never disclosed that the oral products remained officially designated for lab use only. For a wellness movement fueled by podcasts, influencers and word of mouth, the takeaway from its own backers is blunt: the evidence is anecdotal, and the market is opening anyway.