Peptide research, regulation, discovery. Every story links to the peptide it’s about.
RSSBDNF makes a terrible drug. A screening system built a rigid macrocyclic peptide that grips TrkB, then two copies were fused so the molecule clamps a pair of receptors and switches them on. It fired TrkB, lit ERK and AKT, and elongated axons in cultured neurons. No animal, no dosing, no disease model yet.
Peptide-4 binds Ndc80, half of the clamp that dividing cells use to grab spindle fibers, at 0.45 nanomolar and blocks its partnership with Nuf2. In liver-cancer cells it forced mitotic arrest and death, and it slowed tumors in mice. The target is a flat protein interface small molecules cannot hold, and the whole story is still preclinical.
In the first pediatric-specific study of its kind, 80 percent of adolescents on GLP-1 drugs still had solids on gastric ultrasound before surgery despite fasting more than twice the required time, against 5 percent of healthy controls. The standard preoperative fast did not empty their stomachs.
In seven infants under two, Ascendis Pharma's navepegritide (TransCon CNP) widened the foramen magnum by 3.15 mm over a year, with the compression score stable or improved in all and no decompression surgeries. An open-label sentinel cohort, so the signal is early, but it measures the thing that actually kills in infancy.
LTI-03, a seven-amino-acid caveolin-1 peptide from Rein Therapeutics, ran a 14-day Phase 1b in 24 IPF patients. It did not move lung function, but it significantly reduced IL-11, TSLP and collagen signals in airway cells while protecting the alveolar epithelium.
AsPep-FTSQ assembles into a nanofibre net inside a damaged tendon and sequesters excess TGF-beta1, the growth factor that drives fibrosis, improving repair in rats and beagle dogs.
A light-controlled version of the brain agonist senktide let researchers trigger a single luteinizing-hormone pulse in the mouse hypothalamus, and only an intermediate dose worked.
UCLA structural biologists solved the first atomic structure of the TGFBIp amyloid fibrils behind an inherited corneal dystrophy, then designed short peptides that cap the fibrils' growing ends and slow their growth in a test tube.
In aging mice with fatty liver disease, the antioxidant MitoQ and the approved peptide elamipretide (SS-31) both helped, but one defended the cell's chemistry while the other propped up mitochondrial structure.
In a small Munich study, tear fluid from patients having a provoked cluster-headache attack carried more of the peptide that migraine drugs target, and the rise scaled with how badly the attack hurt.
In 19,770 matched pairs with diabetic neuropathy, GLP-1 users had fewer foot ulcers than patients on a DPP-4 inhibitor but almost twice the rate of Charcot neuroarthropathy, while amputation and bone infection were unchanged.
A laterality-verified records study found GLP-1 drugs tied to about a quarter fewer periprosthetic joint infections two years after knee replacement, with revisions, loosenings, and fractures unchanged. The selective pattern is both the mechanistic clue and the confounding tell.
In a 42-person crossover trial, isocaloric pomegranate juice and sugar-water produced statistically identical blood-sugar curves. The juice triggered a significantly smaller GIP response, one of the two incretins the newest metabolic drugs are built to mimic.
Six weekly doses of a lutetium-177 GRPR antagonist eradicated about half of prostate tumors in mice, with no bone marrow toxicity. Bunching the same six doses into two spaced cycles worked just as well, a flexibility that could matter for a therapy delivered under radiation-safety handling.
In a US records database of resistant hypertension, GLP-1 drugs matched the standard fourth-line pill on blood pressure yet were tied to two-thirds fewer deaths. The gap is bigger than any randomized trial, and the comparator is the catch.