BPC-157: what the compound is

A synthetic peptide of fifteen amino acids. In the one-letter code the sequence is GEPPPGKPADDAGLV: glycine, glutamic acid, three prolines, glycine, lysine, proline, alanine, two aspartic acids, alanine, glycine, leucine, valine. Fifteen residues is why the literature calls it a pentadecapeptide. The molecular formula is C62H98N16O22, the molar mass is about 1419 g/mol, and the CAS registry number is 137525-51-0. Formula, mass, registry number and sequence are all in the public record at PubChem CID 9941957, which is where each of them can be checked against something other than a seller's own page.

None of those figures belongs to a brand or to a supplier. They belong to the molecule. Two vials described by the same sequence and the same measured mass hold the same compound whoever sold them; two vials described only by the same short name may not.

The material is not extracted from anything. It is assembled residue by residue, ordinarily by solid-phase synthesis on a resin, then cleaved from the resin and purified by chromatography. What survives freeze-drying is a peptide salt: peptide, plus the counter-ions left behind by purification, plus the residual water the drying did not take out. That is why the peptide content on a certificate is lower than the purity figure, and why neither number is wrong. The guide on purity and peptide content takes the two apart.

Why the mass line matters more than the purity line

Purity answers how much of one thing is in the vial. Mass answers which thing it is. Mass spectrometry gives a measured value that sits beside the value calculated from the sequence, and the two should agree within the resolution of the instrument. A listing that gives a name and a purity percentage but no mass has not said which molecule it means, and the percentage is a proportion of something unidentified.

For this compound there is a second reason to read the mass line. The free peptide and salt forms of it circulate under the same short name. They are chemically different substances with different masses, and the public registry lists the free base and a salt among the synonyms for that one short name. A certificate that prints the name and a percentage, with no statement of salt form, has left the question of what is in the vial half answered.

From the group that first described the sequence. BPC-157 is reported as a partial sequence of a larger protein described from human gastric juice, which those authors called a body protection compound. The name is therefore a laboratory designation out of a run of papers, in exactly the way TB-500 and CJC-1295 are laboratory designations.

This is worth stating plainly, because in the trade the name gets used as though it were a finding. It is not one. A name that authors give a substance records the hypothesis they were testing. It records nothing about what the substance does in a person, and no regulator, approval or trial stands behind the words. They come from the title of a paper.

The number carries no meaning either. The 157 is a serial number from a research series. It is not a purity figure, not a generation, not a grade, and reading it as any of those is reading something in.

The literature on this peptide is large and almost entirely preclinical: cell work and animal work, mostly rats and mice, published across roughly three decades and to a considerable extent by a small number of groups. A 2025 review in Pharmaceuticals surveys the published work and the patent record and is openly available: PubMed 40005999.

What an animal study supports is a methodological question rather than an opinion. It supports a statement about the model that was run: that species, that quantity, that interval, that endpoint. It does not support a statement about a person. The route from a rodent model to a defensible statement about people runs through controlled trials in people, and for this compound that route has not been completed.

It was started. Under the development codes PL-10, PLD-116 and PL 14736 a substance of this series was taken into clinical investigation by a pharmaceutical company; PubMed 17186181 is one of the papers from that programme, and the same development codes appear among the registry synonyms for the compound. No approval came out of it. A development programme that stopped is exactly that and nothing more: it is not evidence that something works, and it is not evidence that it does not.

This page names no uses, although the cited papers investigate some. A named use invites a conclusion about people that the evidence does not carry, and under the law described in the guide on how a medicinal product is defined it also sets a purpose that changes what the material legally is. Anyone who wants to know what was studied can follow the links; a summary here would be an assertion, and the sources are not.

There is no marketing authorisation for this substance as a human medicine in the United Kingdom or in the European Union. It appears in no register of authorised products. The EU framework runs on the principle that a medicinal product needs an authorisation from the competent authorities before it is placed on the market, with the requirements set out in Directive 2001/83/EC and Regulation (EC) No 726/2004 - the European Commission's own summary puts it in those terms. In Great Britain the parallel rule is regulation 46 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, under which a person may not sell or supply, or offer to sell or supply, an unauthorised medicinal product.

Whether any given transaction falls inside those rules is not settled by the name of a compound. It is settled by the definition test, which looks at how a thing is presented and at what it does, applied to particular facts. That test is what the legality guide describes, and it is the reason this page carries chemistry and citations rather than an answer.

One further status is worth knowing for readers who compete under the World Anti-Doping Code. BPC-157 is prohibited under section S0, non-approved substances, of the WADA Prohibited List, which covers pharmacological substances with no approval from any governmental health authority for use in people; the United States Anti-Doping Agency states the classification in those words. S0 is a status that follows from the absence of an approval, which is why it applies to a compound nobody has authorised anywhere.

Because short names from research papers are not trade designations with fixed meanings, and in this category more rides on that than anyone expects. The clearest case is TB-500: the name is used both for full-length thymosin beta-4, around 4963 Da, and for a short fragment of around 889 Da, a difference of a factor of five. CJC-1295 is sold with and without a DAC complex, about 3647 g/mol against about 3368. With BPC-157 the split is narrower - free peptide against a salt of it - but it is the same kind of gap, and it is invisible in a product title.

Here that gap is worth doing in numbers, because it is the one a label hides. Arginine weighs 174.20 g/mol against the peptide's 1419.53. At one arginine per molecule that is 10.9% of the mass of the salt, so a vial labelled 5 mg of arginate holds about 4.45 mg of peptide. The stoichiometry is not fixed either: the sequence carries three acidic residues against one basic one, so more than one equivalent is possible, and at two the same 5 mg holds about 4.01 mg.

That is the useful part. The stoichiometry is rarely published, a label rarely says whether its milligrams are the salt or the peptide, and between those readings sits about half a milligram in five. The figure that settles it is the peptide content on the certificate, which is a different number from purity and the reason that guide exists.

The rule that follows is simple to apply. The name identifies a series of papers. The sequence identifies a molecule. Only the sequence together with a measured mass identifies what was tested. An offer that works from the short name alone has left identity open, and it has left it open regardless of how large the purity figure printed next to it is.

Numbers after a peptide name mean nothing consistent either. Sometimes a serial number from a research series, sometimes a residue position, sometimes a preparation number from a development programme. Three different things, one convention, no way to tell them apart from the digits.

A useful certificate answers six questions, and answers them for a named batch rather than for a product line.

1. Identity. The measured mass beside the mass calculated from GEPPPGKPADDAGLV, with the method named.
2. Salt form. Free peptide or a salt, and which counter-ion. Without it the mass line can only be half read.
3. Purity. The main peak as a share of all the peak area detected, with the chromatographic method, and with the individual impurity peaks rather than the headline alone.
4. Peptide content. The share of the vial contents that is peptide at all. It is a separate determination, and it is the line that goes missing first.
5. Water content. Residual moisture in the lyophilisate, conventionally by Karl Fischer titration.
6. Batch number, test date and method. Without a batch number the paper belongs to no vial; without a method a number is not a result.

How to read each of those lines is set out in the guide to reading a certificate. Two points from it apply with particular force here: a certificate describes one batch and not a product, and a document that exists only as a PDF on a seller's own site is a document. Handling the material once it arrives - solvent volume, concentration, storage, the mistakes that quietly cost a sample - is a separate guide, and that one describes procedure rather than use.

Peptorium is neither a laboratory nor a manufacturer. The following statements are therefore absent from this page, and they are absent because they could not be supported rather than out of caution:

• No claim is made that this peptide does anything in a human being. The published work does not reach that question.
• No use, quantity, schedule or interval is given, and no dosing information appears anywhere on this site.
• No safety statement is made. Without controlled trials in people there is none available in either direction, and an absence of reported harm is not a finding of safety.
• No purity figure is presented as the measurement of any batch, and no testing laboratory is named.
• No authorised medicine is offered as a comparison.

What is left is the description: a synthetic fifteen-residue peptide, a laboratory name from a run of papers, a preclinical literature, a development programme that stopped, no authorisation anywhere, and a certificate that ought to answer six questions. Anybody promising more than that is promising something other than what was measured.

Last reviewed: September 2026.

• PubChem CID 9941957 - formula, molar mass, CAS number 137525-51-0, sequence and synonyms.
• PubMed 40005999 - a 2025 review of the published literature and the patent record, openly available.
• PubMed 17186181 - a 2006 paper from the PL 14736 development programme.
• USADA on BPC-157 - prohibited under section S0, non-approved substances.
• European Commission - the authorisation principle, Directive 2001/83/EC and Regulation (EC) No 726/2004.
• Human Medicines Regulations 2012, regulation 46 - unauthorised medicinal products.