Blog

History & background

How did we get here? Discoveries, biographical episodes, milestones, editorial reflections — narrative with sources.

HistoryEra: 1987–present· 6 min2026-05-22

Amylin — the forgotten second pancreatic hormone and its late return

In 1987 Garth Cooper in Oxford discovered that the pancreatic β-cell secretes not only insulin but a second peptide in parallel: amylin. 18 years later, pramlintide became the first amylin analog on the market — and never emerged from insulin's shadow. Today, in 2024-2026, the amylin line is gaining new attention via cagrilintide: as a combination partner with semaglutide in the CagriSema combination.

Featuring: Garth Cooper (Biochemist, Oxford and later Auckland; first characterisation of amylin in 1987), Anders Fink-Jensen (Clinical pharmacologist, Novo Nordisk; driving force behind cagrilintide)

ReflectionEra: 1981–present· 7 min2026-05-22

Defensins, cathelicidins and why antimicrobial peptides did not make it as antibiotics

The idea is old and biologically attractive: the immune system produces its own antimicrobial peptides — defensins, cathelicidins, magainins — that kill bacteria directly, often including resistant ones. With the growing global antibiotic resistance crisis they seem the obvious solution. Despite 40 years of research and hundreds of clinical trials, not a single systemically approved antimicrobial peptide drug exists. A stocktake of the structural reasons.

Featuring: Michael Zasloff (Paediatrician and biochemist; discovered magainins in 1987 in the skin of the African clawed frog), Robert Lehrer (Immunologist, UCLA; characterised human defensins from the early 1980s)

HistoryEra: 1971–present· 6 min2026-05-22

Bachem and PolyPeptide — the invisible industry that produces every approved peptide

If you are prescribed a peptide medicine — semaglutide, octreotide, leuprolide, almost any other — the actual active ingredient was very likely synthesised in one of a few specialised facilities in Switzerland, Sweden or Belgium. Bachem, PolyPeptide and Polypeptide Laboratories are the world's largest contract manufacturers for clinically approved peptides — an industry that rarely appears in public but forms the backbone of all peptide pharmacology.

Featuring: Peter Grogg (Swiss chemist; founder of Bachem 1971 in Bubendorf)

HistoryEra: 1921–1923· 8 min2026-05-22

Four men in a Toronto summer — how Banting, Best, Macleod and Collip extracted insulin

The insulin story is often abbreviated to two names: Banting and Best. In reality the 1921-1922 extraction was a collaboration of four very different men in different equipment and with substantial personal friction. A detailed chronology of the summer in which a chronically lethal condition became a treatable disease.

Featuring: Frederick Banting (Orthopaedic surgeon, not an endocrinologist; initiator of the extraction experiments), Charles Best (Fourth-year medical student; technical assistant to Banting), John Macleod (Professor of Physiology, University of Toronto; lab head who gave Banting space and dogs), James Collip (Biochemist, brought in December 1921; developed the purification method that made insulin clinically usable)

HistoryEra: 2001–2015· 6 min2026-05-22

From bacterial toxin to day cream — how botulinum toxin became a hexapeptide

Botulinum toxin cleaves the SNARE protein SNAP-25, paralysing muscle nerves. In the early 2000s, researchers in Barcelona asked the obvious question: could the same target — SNARE inhibition — be imitated with a small, topically tolerable peptide? Argireline was the result. A substance with small but real effect sizes — and a much larger marketing myth.

Featuring: Antonio Ferrer-Montiel (Biochemist, Lipotec/Universidad Miguel Hernández; first Argireline publication), Alan Scott (Ophthalmologist who established botulinum toxin in the 1970s-80s as strabismus therapy (context))

HistoryEra: 1991–present· 7 min2026-05-22

BPC-157 and the question of what a 'Body Protective Compound' actually is

Since the 1990s, a group around Predrag Sikirić in Zagreb has described a pentadecapeptide with an unusually broad range of preclinical effects. BPC-157 has become an internet legend — and a special case in academic medicine. A stocktake.

Featuring: Predrag Sikirić (Pharmacologist, University of Zagreb; original description of BPC-157), Andrew Huberman (Neuroscientist/podcaster; contributed to the topic's popular spread in bio-hacking circles)

HistoryEra: 1962–present· 6 min2026-05-22

Salmon calcitonin and the animal-vs-recombinant teaching case — how a fish hormone became an osteoporosis therapy

Calcitonin regulates calcium homeostasis in humans and inhibits osteoclasts. But human calcitonin acts clinically insufficiently. The pharmacological solution came from an unusual source: salmon calcitonin, which is 40-fold more potent in humans than the body's own. A story about the rare constellation in which a non-conspecific hormone is clinically superior to the body-identical one — and about the slow disappearance of a once widely prescribed therapy.

Featuring: Douglas Harold Copp (Endocrinologist, University of British Columbia; discovery of calcitonin in 1962)

ReflectionEra: 1995–present· 7 min2026-05-22

Lipotec, Sederma and the rise of an industry of its own — cosmetic peptides as a sector

In the 1990s, a separate industry emerged parallel to the pharmaceutical peptide world: cosmetic peptides. Today substances like Argireline, Matrixyl, SNAP-8 and dozens of others fill the active-ingredient lists of thousands of cosmetic products. An industry between mechanistic plausibility, small clinical effects and marketing-driven expansion.

Featuring: Sederma SAS (French cosmetic-peptide company, Le Perray-en-Yvelines; Matrixyl family, subsidiary of Croda International), Lipotec SAU (Spanish cosmetic-peptide company, Barcelona; Argireline family, subsidiary of Lubrizol), Karl Lintner (French biochemist, Sederma co-founder; pioneer of the Matrixyl family)

HistoryEra: 1928–1955· 6 min2026-05-22

Vincent du Vigneaud, oxytocin and the first synthesis of a peptide hormone

In 1953 Vincent du Vigneaud at Cornell University published the first total synthesis of an endogenous peptide hormone: oxytocin. Eight amino acids, one cyclic disulphide, months of manual work in solution. In 1955 du Vigneaud received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Eight years later Bruce Merrifield made the same work possible in a weekend with solid-phase synthesis. But without du Vigneaud's proof that it is possible at all, Merrifield's method would not have existed.

Featuring: Vincent du Vigneaud (Biochemist, Cornell University Medical College; first total synthesis of a peptide hormone, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1955)

ReflectionEra: 1975–present· 7 min2026-05-22

Endorphins, enkephalins and the failure to develop opioid-free pain therapies

In 1975 two groups — in Aberdeen and in San Francisco — isolated the first endogenous opioids: enkephalins and endorphins. The hope of the following decades: a peptide-based pain therapy without addiction potential. 50 years and hundreds of preclinical studies later, no single approved peptide-based opioid alternative exists. A story about mechanistic plausibility and clinical failure — and the complexity of using a pathway that is biologically central.

Featuring: Hans Kosterlitz (Pharmacologist, University of Aberdeen; co-discoverer of enkephalins 1975), John Hughes (Aberdeen co-author, first characterisation of Met- and Leu-enkephalin), Avram Goldstein (Pharmacologist, Stanford; isolated β-endorphin in parallel, emphasised the addiction problem early on)

HistoryEra: 1973–present· 7 min2026-05-22

Loren Pickart and the question why old blood does not regenerate — the discovery of GHK-Cu

In 1973, a postdoctoral fellow in San Francisco asked whether there is a small substance in the blood serum of younger people that prompts older hepatocytes to regenerate. He found a tripeptide with copper affinity — Gly-His-Lys — that has accompanied wound-healing and cosmetic research for the next 50 years.

Featuring: Loren Pickart (Biochemist, originally San Francisco; discovery of GHK in 1973), Anna Margolina (Co-author of later Pickart publications on cosmetic application)

HistoryEra: 1976–2005· 7 min2026-05-22

Cyril Bowers and the hormone nobody was looking for — the discovery of GHRPs

In 1976, an endocrinologist in New Orleans stumbled on a tiny peptide trace that released growth hormone — through a receptor nobody knew about. It became a family of substances (GHRP-2, GHRP-6, ipamorelin) and in 1999 led to the discovery of the ghrelin receptor. A story about a researcher who followed an anomaly for 20 years.

Featuring: Cyril Y. Bowers (Endocrinologist, Tulane University; discovery of GHRPs), Frank Momany (Computational chemist, co-designer of GHRP sequences), Masayasu Kojima (Discoverer of the endogenous ghrelin ligand in 1999)

HistoryEra: 1980s–2005· 7 min2026-05-22

The Gila monster and the diabetes drug

In 1992, a Detroit endocrinologist isolated a peptide from the saliva of a desert lizard that pancreata had failed to produce for decades: a GLP-1 analog with long half-life. It became exenatide — the mother of all modern GLP-1 therapies.

Featuring: John Eng (Endocrinologist, Bronx VA Medical Center), Jean-Pierre Raufman (Co-author of the exendin-4 studies), Daniel Drucker (Diabetes researcher, Toronto)

HistoryEra: 1971–2022· 6 min2026-05-22

GIP — the incretin that wasn't needed for 50 years

Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) was isolated in 1971 by John Brown in Vancouver — before GLP-1, before exendin-4, before all other incretins. Nevertheless it remained pharmacologically unused for decades. Only in 2022, with tirzepatide, did GIP return to the clinic as the second half of a multi-target design. A story about the hormone that was not the hero of its own discovery.

Featuring: John C. Brown (Endocrinologist, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; isolation of GIP in 1971), Jens Juul Holst (Endocrinologist, University of Copenhagen; established the GLP-1 axis in the mid-1980s, contrasted it with GIP)

HistoryEra: 1923–present· 6 min2026-05-22

Glucagon renaissance — from diabetes scare hormone to multi-target partner

Glucagon has been known for nearly 100 years as the hormone that raises hepatic glucose production — exactly what one does not want in diabetes. Nevertheless in 2024-2026 it has returned, as a component of retatrutide and survodutide, to the most advanced obesity/diabetes trials. A story about a hormone whose clinical value changes when seen in a new combination.

Featuring: John R. Murlin (Biochemist, University of Rochester; named 'glucagon' in 1923 as the second pancreatic substance alongside insulin), Earl Sutherland (Biochemist, Western Reserve University; elucidated the glucagon-cAMP signalling pathway, Nobel Prize 1971)

HistoryEra: 1981–1985· 7 min2026-05-22

How a pancreatic tumour revealed growth-hormone-releasing hormone

Until 1982 nobody had isolated the hypothalamic hormone that stimulates growth hormone secretion — although its existence had been postulated for two decades. Roger Guillemin and, in parallel, Michael Thorner isolated it from an unexpected place: the pancreatic tumours of two patients with ectopic acromegaly. The substance became sermorelin, later CJC-1295, and eventually the entire GHRH analog family.

Featuring: Roger Guillemin (Endocrinologist, Salk Institute; Nobel Prize 1977, GHRH isolation 1982), Michael O. Thorner (Endocrinologist, University of Virginia; parallel GHRH isolation, clinical characterisation), Wylie W. Vale (Salk Institute, co-isolated multiple hypothalamic releasing hormones; co-author of the Guillemin line)

HistoryEra: 1921–1923· 8 min2026-05-22

How a summer in Toronto changed medicine — insulin, 1921

Before 1921, type 1 diabetes was a death sentence. Children were put on starvation diets and died within months. A country doctor, a medical student and a university lab changed that in a single summer.

Featuring: Frederick Banting (Orthopaedic surgeon from London, Ontario), Charles Best (Medical student, age 22), J.J.R. Macleod (Professor of Physiology, University of Toronto), James Collip (Biochemist, extract purification), Leonard Thompson (Age 14, first treated patient)

HistoryEra: 1973–present· 8 min2026-05-22

The Khavinson school — how a St Petersburg research group established an entire peptide family

Since the 1970s, a research group around Vladimir Khavinson at the St Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology has described a family of short peptides they call 'peptide bioregulators'. Epitalon, thymalin and dozens of other substances are clinically used in Russia — and barely replicated in the West. How a scientific tradition can be productive and isolated at the same time.

Featuring: Vladimir Khavinson (Gerontologist, St Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation; founder of the peptide bioregulator school), Vyacheslav Anisimov (Oncologist, Petrov Institute St Petersburg; co-author of many Khavinson studies on oncology and longevity)

HistoryEra: 1959–1984· 7 min2026-05-22

How Bruce Merrifield made the peptide era possible — solid-phase peptide synthesis

Before 1963, synthesising a new peptide was a months-long act of purification, loss, repetition. Bruce Merrifield at the Rockefeller Institute had a disarmingly simple idea: anchor the growing peptide chain to a solid polymer resin so that excess reagents can simply be washed away after each step. Two decades later every commercial peptide synthesiser was an application of this principle — and in 1984 Merrifield received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Featuring: R. Bruce Merrifield (Biochemist, Rockefeller Institute (today Rockefeller University); inventor of SPPS, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1984)

HistoryEra: 1973–1988· 7 min2026-05-22

How Sandoz turned a 14-amino-acid hormone into an 8-amino-acid drug — the story of octreotide

Somatostatin inhibits the release of growth hormone, insulin, glucagon and many digestive hormones in the body. It was not clinically usable: half-life below three minutes. In the 1970s a Sandoz research group in Basel cut the 14-amino-acid peptide down to eight amino acids, kept the critical β-turn — and had the first somatostatin analog with clinical half-life on the market in 1988.

Featuring: Roger Guillemin (Endocrinologist, Salk Institute; first isolation of somatostatin 1973, Nobel Prize 1977), Wilfried Bauer (Peptide chemist, Sandoz Pharma AG Basel; led the octreotide design group), Janet Lamberts (Endocrinologist, Erasmus University Rotterdam; clinical trials in acromegaly and carcinoid)

HistoryEra: 2003–present· 6 min2026-05-22

PCSK9 — when antibodies beat the peptide programme

In 2003 a French genetics group discovered a protein regulating the number of LDL receptors on liver cells: PCSK9. It was one of the most attractive target structures of modern medicine — a knockout reduced LDL cholesterol by over 50%. Several substance classes — small molecules, peptides, antibodies, later RNA interference — competed for the market. The antibodies won. The peptides did not. A story about the sometimes unfair advantages of a different substance class.

Featuring: Nabil Seidah (Biochemist, Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal; characterised PCSK9 from 2003), Helen Hobbs (Human geneticist, UT Southwestern; identified PCSK9 loss-of-function variants and their protective effect)

ReflectionEra: Methodology· 8 min2026-05-22

Peptides vs. small molecules — what makes peptides special, and where their limits lie

Pharmacologically, drugs split roughly into two worlds: small organic molecules (aspirin, statins, antibiotics) and biological substances (antibodies, recombinant proteins, peptides). Peptides sit between — larger and more complex than small molecules, smaller and simpler than antibodies. This middle position determines their pharmacokinetic peculiarities and the logic of their clinical use.

HistoryEra: 1980s–2019· 7 min2026-05-22

How a sun-tanning peptide accidentally led to sexual pharmacology

In the 1980s, a pharmacologist in Arizona tried to develop a melanotropin analog to prevent skin cancer through stimulation of endogenous tanning. An unexpected side effect during self-experiments — spontaneous erections — led two decades later to the approval of bremelanotide (PT-141) as a therapy for hypoactive sexual desire. A story of research serendipity, self-experimentation and the long path to approval.

Featuring: Victor Hruby (Peptide chemist, University of Arizona; originally developed the α-MSH analogs), Mac Hadley (Endocrinologist, University of Arizona; self-experiments with melanotan-II), Hunter Wessells (Urologist; characterised the erection effect in clinical trials)

HistoryEra: 1955–1985· 8 min2026-05-22

Schally, GnRH and a Nobel Prize from 250,000 pig brains

In 1971 Andrew Schally in New Orleans isolated a single decapeptide from the hypothalami of hundreds of thousands of pig brains: gonadotropin-releasing hormone. Six years later he received the Nobel Prize for it. The substance and its agonists/antagonists became the basis of an entire class of oncological and endocrinological therapies.

Featuring: Andrew V. Schally (Endocrinologist, VA Hospital New Orleans; Nobel Prize 1977 for isolation of hypothalamic hormones), Roger Guillemin (Competitor and co-laureate 1977; isolated TRH and GHRH in parallel), Rosalyn Yalow (Co-laureate 1977 (radioimmunoassay) — the measurement method that made the isolation possible at all)

HistoryEra: 1980s–present· 7 min2026-05-22

Tuftsin, ACTH and the Soviet nootropic school — how Selank and Semax came to be

In the 1980s, a Moscow research group modified two endogenous peptide sequences — tuftsin and an ACTH fragment — by C-terminal tetrapeptide extensions into more stable analogs: Selank and Semax. From the research institutes of the late Soviet Union came substances that today are approved in Russia and circulate in the West as research chemicals.

Featuring: Nikolai F. Myasoedov (Academician, Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; driving force behind Semax and Selank), Lyudmila A. Andreeva (Co-author of the Selank/Semax research series)

MilestoneEra: 1995–2010· 6 min2026-05-22

Tesamorelin and HIV lipodystrophy — the only approved GHRH analog

In the early 2000s it became clear that combination antiretroviral therapy in HIV-positive patients causes a peculiar body-fat redistribution — visceral adiposity alongside peripheral lipoatrophy. In 2010 tesamorelin, a stabilised GHRH analog from the Canadian firm Theratechnologies, received FDA approval for exactly this indication. To this day the only GHRH analog with an ICH-GCP-compliant human approval.

Featuring: Theratechnologies (Canadian biotech, Montréal; developed tesamorelin and Egrifta), Steven Grinspoon (Endocrinologist, Massachusetts General Hospital; lead investigator of the pivotal tesamorelin phase 3 trials)

HistoryEra: 1973–present· 7 min2026-05-22

Tirzepatide, retatrutide and rational multi-target design — what happens when a peptide binds three receptors at once

Until around 2010, pharmacological peptide design focused on 'one molecule, one receptor'. Eli Lilly turned the logic around: a single peptide was to activate the GLP-1 and GIP receptors simultaneously — tirzepatide. In 2024 retatrutide followed with additional glucagon-receptor activity. A story about rational multi-target design, additive effect, and where the strategy's limits lie.

Featuring: Matthias Tschöp (Endocrinologist, Helmholtz Munich; pioneer of the multi-incretin hypothesis, with Richard DiMarchi), Richard DiMarchi (Peptide chemist, Indiana University; medicinal-chemistry architect of the dual/triple incretin concepts)

ReflectionEra: 1921–2026· 6 min2026-05-22

What 100 years of insulin teach us about the GLP-1 wave

Insulin was the first life-saving peptide drug in 1921. GLP-1 analogues in 2026 are the fastest pharmacological diffusion of a peptide active principle since insulin. What can be derived from 100 years of pancreatic hormone history — about patents, supply, generics and expectations.

HistoryEra: 2008–2023· 8 min2026-05-22

How a diabetes drug became a global obesity therapy

Semaglutide was approved as a weekly diabetes injection in 2017. Four years later the same substance, under a different name — Wegovy — was an obesity drug. The pivot story: an expected side effect, a dedicated trial programme and a global supply crunch.

Featuring: Lotte Bjerre Knudsen (Chief Scientific Advisor, Novo Nordisk; driving force behind the GLP-1/obesity line), John Wilding (Clinical lead investigator STEP-1), Robert Kushner (Obesity clinician, Northwestern University, STEP programme)

ReflectionEra: Methodology· 8 min2026-05-22

How to read a peptide study? A guide to critical assessment

Peptide studies are often perceived popularly as 'the study says X'. In reality a study delivers a measured result under certain conditions — and what follows clinically depends on a dozen methodological factors. This primer shows the key questions for assessing any peptide study.

HistoryEra: 1985–present· 6 min2026-05-22

Zoladex and the invention of the monthly peptide depot — how AstraZeneca turned goserelin into an implant

Already with leuprolide in 1985 it was clear: GnRH analogs can pharmacologically 'castrate' prostate cancer. But daily injections were no comfort in an oncological patient population. In 1989 Imperial Chemical Industries (later AstraZeneca) launched Zoladex — goserelin in a biodegradable polymer matrix, in a pre-filled applicator, deposited subcutaneously, one implant per month. It was the first complete peptide depot.

Featuring: Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Pharma (British pharma conglomerate, later Zeneca, AstraZeneca from 1999; developer of goserelin and Zoladex)