Peptides and the WADA Prohibited List

Several compounds described on this site are named in the 2026 WADA Prohibited List. BPC-157 is named in S0. TB-500 is named in S2.3. CJC-1295 and ipamorelin are named in S2.2.4. Retatrutide, Semax, Epitalon and Melanotan II are named nowhere in it. Anyone subject to anti-doping rules should check with their own federation, and this page is not that check.

The Prohibited List is a mandatory International Standard under the World Anti-Doping Code. It is revised annually after a consultation run by WADA, and the 2026 edition came into effect on 1 January 2026. The official text is maintained by WADA and published in English and French, and the English version prevails if the two disagree.

Two distinctions run through it. The first is when a substance is banned: some classes are prohibited at all times, in and out of competition, and others only in competition. The second is whether a substance is Specified or non-Specified, which under Article 4.2.2 of the Code affects how sanctions are applied. The Code's own comment on that article is worth quoting for what it heads off: specified substances are not less important or less dangerous, they are simply more likely to have been consumed for a reason other than enhancing sport performance.

The in-competition period has a definition rather than a common-sense meaning. Unless WADA has approved a different period for a sport, it runs from just before midnight on the day before a competition the athlete is scheduled to take part in, until the end of that competition and the sample collection process. Everything else is out of competition, and a class prohibited at all times covers both.

Most of what is relevant here sits in S2, headed peptide hormones, growth factors, related substances, and mimetics. It has three parts, and knowing which part a compound falls in is usually the difference between finding it and concluding wrongly that it is absent:

• S2.1 - erythropoietins and agents affecting erythropoiesis, in five numbered groups.
• S2.2 - peptide hormones and their releasing factors, in four numbered groups: testosterone-stimulating peptides in males, corticotrophins and their releasing factors, growth hormone with its analogues and fragments, and growth hormone releasing factors.
• S2.3 - growth factors and growth factor modulators, which lists seven named entries and then extends to other growth factors or growth factor modulators affecting muscle, tendon or ligament protein synthesis and degradation, vascularisation, energy utilization, regenerative capacity or fibre type switching.

S0 sits outside all of that by construction: it applies only to substances that no later section addresses. So a compound is in S0 because of where it is not, which is why reading S0 alone is never enough to place anything.

• BPC-157 - S0, non-approved substances. S0 covers any pharmacological substance not addressed by another section of the List and with no current approval by any governmental regulatory health authority for human therapeutic use. The 2026 text names BPC-157 as one of its examples. Prohibited at all times; all substances in S0 are Specified Substances.
• TB-500 - S2.3, growth factors and growth factor modulators. The entry names thymosin-beta-4 and its derivatives and gives TB-500 as the example. Prohibited at all times; substances in S2 are non-Specified.
• CJC-1295 - S2.2.4, growth hormone releasing factors. Listed by name among analogues of growth hormone releasing hormone. Prohibited at all times, non-Specified.
• Ipamorelin - S2.2.4. Listed by name in the same subsection. Prohibited at all times, non-Specified.
• Retatrutide, Semax, Epitalon, Melanotan II - not named anywhere in the 2026 List.

Because almost every class on the List is defined by description and illustrated by examples rather than closed by a roll of names. The classes are introduced with "including, but not limited to", and S2 adds that substances with similar chemical structure or similar biological effects are prohibited as well. S0 is broader still: it is defined entirely by regulatory status, so a substance can fall inside it without ever being written down.

That is the practical trap. A search of the PDF that returns nothing answers the question "is this name printed here", which is not the question an athlete has. WADA also maintains a separate Monitoring Program covering substances that are not prohibited but whose patterns of use the agency wants to observe, which is a third status again.

German law reaches doping through the Anti-Doping-Gesetz, and it uses two different lists for two different offences. Confusing them is the commonest error in German-language discussion of this.

Section 2(1) prohibits manufacturing, trading in, otherwise supplying or prescribing a doping agent, where the agent is or contains a substance listed in Annex I to the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport, for the purpose of doping a person in sport. That annex is the Prohibited List. Section 2(2) prohibits applying such a substance or a prohibited method to another person.

Section 2(3) is the possession offence, and it uses a different list. It prohibits acquiring, possessing, or bringing into or through Germany a doping agent that is or contains a substance listed in the annex to the Act itself, in more than a small quantity, for the purpose of doping a person in sport. That annex, published at BGBl. 2023 I No. 67, is much shorter than the Prohibited List and is a closed enumeration.

Of the compounds described on this site, the annex to the Act names CJC-1295 and ipamorelin under its heading for growth hormone releasing factors, and thymosin-beta-4 and its derivatives, with TB-500 given as the example, under growth factors. It does not name BPC-157, retatrutide, Semax, Epitalon or Melanotan II. The annex closes by stating that the enumeration includes the various salts, esters, ethers, isomers, mixtures of isomers, complexes and derivatives.

Section 4 sets the penalties, and Section 4(7) narrows the athlete-facing offences considerably: self-administration, competing while doped, and the athlete's own acquisition or possession under Section 3(4) are punishable only for athletes in a testing pool subject to out-of-competition testing, or those earning income of significant scale from their sport. It does not narrow the general offences in Section 2, which apply to anyone. The German edition of this site has its own page on this, because the statute is German and reading it in translation loses the parts that matter.

It describes the 2026 edition of the List, which is revised every year. A compliance check is a different thing, and this page cannot stand in for one. Individual sports may have a different in-competition period approved by WADA. What follows from a finding is decided by the Code and by the body that runs the sport, not by the List. National anti-doping organisations and international federations administer their own rules, and the exemption process is theirs to run.

So the only responsible instruction on this page is to ask them. If you are subject to anti-doping rules, the answer that binds you comes from your federation or your national anti-doping organisation with your circumstances in front of them, and a page written for everybody is not a substitute for it.

This is the part most often inverted. Appearing on the Prohibited List is not a finding that a substance works. S0 in particular is a statement about approvals: a substance is in it because no health authority has approved it and no other section covers it, which is a fact about regulatory files and not about physiology. A compound with no published human evidence at all satisfies that description perfectly.

The same holds in the other direction. Absence from a list is not reassurance, and the classes are written to catch substances by description precisely so that absence cannot be relied on. This site names no use for any compound it describes, and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting one.

Last reviewed: September 2026, against the 2026 Prohibited List and the Anti-Doping-Gesetz as published. This page is not legal advice and is not an anti-doping compliance check.

• WADA, 2026 Prohibited List - S0, S2.2.4 and S2.3, the effective date and the Specified/non-Specified distinction.
• WADA, the Prohibited List - the current edition and the annual revision cycle.
• WADA, 2026 Monitoring Program - substances that are watched rather than prohibited.
• AntiDopG, Section 2 - the two lists and the offences each one feeds.
• AntiDopG, annex to Section 2(3) - the closed enumeration, BGBl. 2023 I No. 67.
• AntiDopG, Section 4 - penalties, and the restriction in subsection 7.