NEWS.

NK2R both curbs appetite and raises energy expenditure, the thing GLP-1 drugs barely do. A new Nature Structural and Molecular Biology paper maps the selectivity a clean NK2R drug needs, since the natural ligand also fires sister receptors that cause side effects.

A 352-patient analysis found only 10 to 20 percent of personalized cancer-vaccine peptides trigger an immune response, and what predicts the winners is hydrophobicity and HLA binding, not which mutation was chosen.

Chemists built 14 ring-shaped peptides from a melanotan II scaffold and found that ring size alone steers them toward blocking or activating MC4R, the brain's appetite receptor, while ignoring its three close cousins. It is a recipe for selectivity the broad melanocortin drugs never had.

Elicio's ELI-002 7P peptide vaccine did not beat observation on disease-free survival across all 144 pancreatic-cancer patients. But the vaccine arm carried nearly twice the share of harder-to-treat cases, and in the cleanly resected majority the shot nearly doubled median time to recurrence.

At one urban clinic, patients on semaglutide lost 6.5 percent of their body weight over a year against 1.1 percent on dulaglutide, and were close to four times as likely to lose 10 percent or more. The patient group was predominantly African American, a population the trials that defined these drugs barely included.

A mitochondrial peptide marketed as an exercise mimic activated AMPK in worn-out human stem cells, then made them divide less, age faster, and fail to repair injured mouse kidneys. The authors call it a dissociation between metabolic activation and function.

EndoCyclic Therapeutics has FDA clearance to begin human testing of ENDO-205, a peptide it calls the first non-hormonal therapy designed to remove endometriosis lesions rather than suppress the symptoms they cause. Every drug approved for the disease today, from the Lupron peptide to newer GnRH-blocking pills, works by lowering estrogen and pushing the body toward a chemical menopause. ENDO-205's lesion-clearing data is still preclinical, the target undisclosed, and the human program at its earliest point, but the mechanism is the first real departure the field has had in years.

HLB Therapeutics says RGN-259, a thymosin beta-4 eye drop for neurotrophic keratitis, failed to beat placebo on complete corneal healing in its European SEER-3 Phase 3, with the company blaming a control arm that recovered better than expected. The same peptide is sold unregulated as TB-500 on a tissue-repair story it has rarely had to prove against a placebo. A second, identical US trial (SEER-2) reads out in the second half of 2026.

A year of weekly GLP-1 on top of standard MS treatment dropped weight, fat, and glucose but left the two nerve-damage markers it was built to move completely flat.

In an 878-patient substudy of the GLORIOUS trial, a continuous exenatide infusion during cardiopulmonary bypass left three-month lung function no better than placebo. Both groups lost about 7.7 points of diffusing capacity, and the drug groups did not separate.

In a single-center cohort of 41 children with short bowel syndrome, the GLP-2 peptide teduglutide got 21 (about half) off intravenous nutrition entirely, with a median 7.3 months to wean. Response tracked residual bowel length.

The first pooled analysis of the CNP analogs vosoritide and navepegritide found about 1.36 cm a year of extra growth in children with achondroplasia, but no change in the body-proportion ratio that defines the condition.

A prospective study of 320 IVF cycles found the same hormone pointing opposite ways: higher oxytocin in the blood meant lower odds of a live birth, while higher oxytocin in the fluid around the egg meant better odds. The compartment, not the molecule, changed the sign.

In a 17-child phase II study, a WT1 peptide vaccine given as post-transplant maintenance reached 70.6 percent three-year survival, and the children whose killer T cells actually responded survived far better than those whose did not.

Chemotherapy lowers thymosin alpha-1, an immune peptide already sold as thymalfasin, and a June 15 Cancer Research paper shows why that matters. The peptide acts as a bodyguard for a fragile RNA alarm (miR146a-5p) that dying-cell debris carries into dendritic cells, shielding it from an enzyme long enough to trip the TLR7 sensor that wakes tumor-killing CD8 T cells. Adding the peptide back synergized with chemotherapy to control tumors in mice, but only when the tumor made high miR146a-5p and TLR7 was intact, which points to both a mechanism and a possible biomarker.