Peptide research, regulation, discovery. Every story links to the peptide it’s about.
RSSHumanin-G, a 24-aa peptide encoded in mtDNA, competitively binds IL-6Rα and shuts down STAT3 in pulmonary endothelium. Patient serum HN spikes on Day 1 of septic ARDS, then fades. Exogenous HNG kept LPS-treated mouse lungs intact.
Female NOD mice on a five-day anti-CD3 pulse (the teplizumab class the FDA approved in 2022) developed diabetes at 66 percent. Adding a beta-cell-targeted GLP-1-17β-estradiol conjugate cut that to 38 percent, the first clean preclinical complementarity in T1D combination therapy.
A team at the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Research in Barcelona and the spinout Endolipid Therapeutics published a short peptide called EDL6D that phenocopies sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), the binding protein consistently low in patients with MASLD. In mice on a high-fat-plus-fructose diet, the peptide both prevented fatty liver and reversed it once established. Mechanism: it downregulates four lipogenic targets (ACL, ACC, FASN, PPARG) at mRNA and protein levels, and drops the early fibrosis markers Col1a1 and TGF-B1.
A Czech-Australian team engineered an insulin analog called 1(Ins) that binds IGF-1R about 1,000-fold more strongly than native insulin while preserving binding to both insulin-receptor splice variants. Phosphoproteomic profiling shows the new ligand triggers its own pattern of intracellular signaling, not a weighted sum of insulin and IGF-1.
A 9-residue cyclic peptide called BLMP6 selectively homes to triple-negative breast cancer metastases in mice. Tagged with gallium-68 it lights up the lungs on PET. Tagged with MMAE it kills the metastatic cells in place. The Kolonin lab also identified the target: fibulin-4, an ECM protein elevated in invasive human breast tumors.
Chugai reported in Organic Process Research and Development a convergent 24-step liquid-phase synthesis of LUNA18 (paluratide) delivering kilogram-scale GMP material at over 98.5% purity and more than 30% overall yield. The molecule is an N-alkyl-rich cyclic undecapeptide oral pan-RAS inhibitor, binding KRAS, NRAS, and HRAS in both wildtype and mutant forms, with 21-47% oral bioavailability. Phase 1 monotherapy and combination-with-cetuximab dose escalation is underway. The chemistry milestone joins Merck's biocatalytic enlicitide cascade as a second large-pharma macrocyclic-peptide manufacturing answer in two weeks.
Merck published a Science paper on May 7 introducing a biocatalytic cascade for the manufacture of enlicitide, an oral PCSK9 inhibitor in Phase 3 with -55.8% LDL-C reported earlier in 2026. A suite of engineered enzymes handles fragment formation, peptide coupling, and macrocyclization in a protecting-group-free sequence, with crystallizations replacing chromatography. Step count drops by more than half versus prior state-of-the-art. The methodology generalizes beyond enlicitide to the broader macrocyclic peptide drug class facing CDMO bottlenecks.
RoboChem-Flex, a self-driving chemistry lab built from 3D-printed parts, was published in Nature Synthesis at a $5,000 hardware cost. The same week, a hobbyist used Claude Opus to sequence their own genome at home for around the same money. Both signal the same trend: the wet-lab gate is opening on the same arc that opened machine learning.