Peptide research, regulation, discovery. Every story links to the peptide it’s about.
RSSA Biomaterials paper pairs each surface peptide on an engineered extracellular vesicle with a unique barcode in the guide-RNA payload, so one pooled mouse experiment reads out which short motifs drive tropism to which tissue. Hits then delivered functional Cre-loxP gene editing in vivo where the peptides said they would land.
Humanin-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.
A propensity-matched cohort of 2,314 adults on methadone with both opioid use disorder and type 2 diabetes saw remission of OUD rise 75% and suicidal thoughts fall 73% on a GLP-1 RA versus matched controls. Cardiometabolic events dropped on the same axis.
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 post-hoc analysis of the LAMP trial, published today in Stroke, split 510 Chinese patients with minor ischemic stroke and type 2 diabetes by HOMA-IR 2.5. In the insulin-resistant subgroup, liraglutide cut 90-day recurrent stroke from 18.1 percent to 5.8 percent (NNT=8) and composite vascular events from 19.2 to 5.8 percent. In the insulin-sensitive subgroup, no benefit. The treatment-by-insulin-resistance interaction was significant at p equals 0.02 for both endpoints.
A 21-child Phase 2 trial paired Ascendis Pharma's navepegritide, a C-type natriuretic peptide prodrug, with lonapegsomatropin, a growth-hormone prodrug, in achondroplasia. Treatment-naive kids grew 8.69 cm per year versus 5.95 on matched monotherapy, a 2.74 cm per year gain (p less than 0.0001). Nine children already on navepegritide for a year added another 3.28 cm per year. Arm span gained 9.4 cm in the treatment-naive arm, lifting the body-proportionality endpoint that has defined this field.
A meta-analysis of 20 randomized trials and 83,004 type 2 diabetes patients found GLP-1 receptor agonists cut composite renal events 20 percent, the largest effect in the bundle. Cardiovascular events fell 13 percent. Heart failure hospitalizations and coronary revascularizations did not reach statistical significance. The cardio part of cardiorenal is smaller than the framing suggests.
A 144,410-patient propensity-matched cohort in Endocrine Practice (TriNetX, 2015-2023) found GLP-1 receptor agonists associated with 41 percent higher thyroid cancer incidence (HR 1.411), but the signal attenuated to non-significance at the 3-year landmark analysis, consistent with surveillance bias rather than carcinogenicity. Digestive (HR 0.71), respiratory (HR 0.69), oral, female-genital, and CNS cancers were all lower in the GLP-1 RA arm, and held up against active comparators (DPP-4 and SGLT2 inhibitors).
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 meta-analysis of 28 studies and 212,082 patients found GLP-1 receptor agonists nearly quadrupled retained gastric contents (OR 3.95) and procedure cancellations (OR 3.96) before upper endoscopy. The fear that drove the 2023 ASA hold-the-drug advisory, aspiration, did not move (OR 1.09, CI 0.46 to 2.60). The cancellations may be doing the prevention work, which is what the published data cannot disentangle.
Six days after the news section explained why avexitide blocks the GLP-1 receptor to fix post-bariatric hypoglycemia, an Obesity Reviews meta-analysis (Eisa and Barood, 15 May 2026, doi:10.1111/obr.70161) of 7 studies and 337 patients showed that semaglutide, which activates the same receptor, fixes the same complication. Standardized mean differences of -1.18 on dumping symptom scores, -0.85 on hypoglycemic episode frequency, -0.62 on time in hypoglycemia, all p<0.001 with I² heterogeneity at 35-39%. The reconciliation is that the receptor amplification step is downstream of a meal-driven trigger, and semaglutide intercepts the trigger by slowing gastric emptying. Two drugs at the same receptor in opposite directions, both producing the same outcome by acting on different parts of the chain.
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.
The European Association for the Study of Obesity updated its living obesity-pharmacotherapy framework. Two cells moved. Tirzepatide is now first-line when weight loss is the goal and the patient has no other complications. Semaglutide is the only drug recommended for improvement in MASH-fibrosis stage. Sixty-two randomized trials behind a society guideline that updated in seven months instead of seven years.
A 1,021-patient propensity-matched cohort found that starting a GLP-1 receptor agonist dropped time in therapeutic range by 2.1 percentage points (p=0.01) and increased time above range by 1.3 points. Mean INR did not shift — variance did. The interaction is behavioral, not pharmacokinetic: appetite suppression makes vitamin K intake variable, and warfarin's narrow window tracks that variability.
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.