Peptide research, regulation, discovery. Every story links to the peptide it’s about.
RSSIn rats and mice, switching on calcitonin receptors in a brainstem cluster called the locus coeruleus cut food intake and body weight while leaving nausea and heart rate untouched. The body's own amylin and CGRP act there too, a hint for the amylin drugs chasing weight loss with fewer side effects.
In a phase 2 trial, 50 people seeking help for alcohol use disorder took oral semaglutide or placebo for eight weeks. The drug did not beat placebo on a lab craving test, but it cut heavy drinking days, real-world craving, alcohol-related harms, and even cannabis use.
Peceleganan, an approved antimicrobial peptide built from moth and bee-venom fragments, beat placebo on the clinical scoring of infected diabetic foot ulcers in a double-blind trial. Overall it did not clear measurably more bacteria. The one exception was the drug-resistant subgroup.
Intratumoral leptin predicted better survival in breast and liver cancers but worse survival in colon and esophageal ones, and the difference ran through IDO1, pointing to a subgroup where a failed drug class might still work.
GLP-1 drugs are known to prevent strokes. In 209,180 records, the people taking one who had a stroke anyway arrived with milder strokes, fewer complications, and lower 30-day death than matched non-users.
A rationally designed peptide called X1-3 killed MRSA and carbapenem-resistant gut bacteria on its own, then made the beta-lactam antibiotics those bugs had defeated work again by disabling the NDM and PBP2a resistance enzymes. It is a dish-and-mouse result from Northwest A&F University, not yet a drug.
Cigarette smoke shreds the lung's elastic scaffold into short peptides, and a Guangzhou Medical University study finds those fragments actively block the stem-cell handoff that rebuilds alveoli. An experimental peptide that neutralizes them partly restored repair in smoke-exposed mice.
In 52,212 obese non-diabetic adults, pairing a GLP-1 injection with an SGLT2 pill cut irregular heartbeats about 18 percent over five years, almost all of it atrial fibrillation. An early bump in a dangerous ventricular rhythm faded by year five.
Turning the GIP receptor on suppresses appetite through the brainstem. Blocking it boosts GLP-1 weight loss through the hypothalamus. A Cambridge mouse study maps the field's most contradictory result to two different brain regions, which means tirzepatide and MariTide were never really answering the same question.
In nearly a million people with type 2 diabetes, SGLT2 inhibitors were tied to fewer osteoarthritis diagnoses than GLP-1 drugs. The edge vanished at the endpoint that counts, knee and hip replacement.
DMS-DA6, a dermaseptin from the Mexican leaf frog, cleared actinomycetoma in mice on eight injections while linezolid took about fifty-six doses. It killed bacteria and retuned the immune response at once.
Temporin-GHaR6R, an antimicrobial peptide from frog skin, cut how often mice developed an MS-like disease when given before onset. It worked by steering brain immune cells out of their inflammatory state and fusing their fragmented mitochondria back together.
Alpha-1 antitrypsin ran higher in bacterial community-acquired pneumonia than viral, independent of CRP, with an AUC of 0.803. Its shed C-terminal peptides split further: C37 leaned bacterial, C40 leaned viral.
Pep19-2.5, built to soak up bacterial toxins, turns out to shut down the NLRP3 inflammasome from inside the cell. In mouse airways it cut IL-1 beta and eosinophils and improved lung function.
Intranasal vasopressin lowered voluntary ethanol intake in mice without moving blood pressure. Blocking any one of three receptors it lands on (V1a, V1b, or the oxytocin receptor) undid the effect, and social housing recruited a different receptor than solitary housing.