BPC-157: what it is and what to check before buying

BPC-157 is a synthetic peptide of fifteen residues, sequence GEPPPGKPADDAGLV, CAS 137525-51-0, with a calculated mass of 1419.53 g/mol. It holds no marketing authorisation in the UK or the EU and is not a food supplement. Before buying, three things can be checked: the identity, the analysis behind any figure quoted, and who produced that analysis.

Nomenclature: BPC-157, Body Protection Compound, PL 14736

The letters stand for Body Protection Compound. That name came from the description of the protein the sequence was taken from, and it is not a statement about what the peptide does: it records where the parent protein was found and nothing else. A name is not evidence, and this one is quoted as though it were more often than any other in the category. The trailing 157 identifies the fragment.

The same compound appears in older papers and in patent filings as PL 14736, occasionally as PL-10, and often as pentadecapeptide BPC 157. The spellings BPC-157, BPC 157 and BPC157 all name the same sequence. What distinguishes offers is not the spelling but the form: material is sold as the free peptide and as an arginate salt, and the two weigh different amounts per vial even where the peptide in them is identical. A listing that names neither the salt form nor a mass has not told you which one it is selling.

Peptorium does not summarise the published literature on this compound, does not carry it across to humans, and runs no clinical research. What this page can do is set out the identity, say what the regulatory position actually is, and give the questions that separate a checkable offer from an unchecked one.

Identity: sequence, formula, mass

The sequence is Gly-Glu-Pro-Pro-Pro-Gly-Lys-Pro-Ala-Asp-Asp-Ala-Gly-Leu-Val, written in one-letter code as GEPPPGKPADDAGLV. The molecular formula is C₆₂H₉₈N₁₆O₂₂, publicly listed as PubChem CID 9941957; the mass calculated from that formula is 1419.53 g/mol and the CAS number is 137525-51-0. The sequence contains no cysteine, so the molecule carries no disulfide bridges - which is why it behaves straightforwardly in aqueous solution and why a certificate for it should not be showing oxidation-related impurity chemistry that only cysteine-containing peptides produce.

Three prolines in a row, at positions three to five, are worth knowing about for a different reason: proline-rich stretches are among the harder sequences to assemble cleanly in solid-phase synthesis, and the characteristic impurities are deletion sequences, chains missing one residue. Those are close in mass to the target. It is exactly the situation where a single headline purity percentage, with no chromatogram and no impurity table behind it, tells a buyer very little.

The CAS number is the anchor to use, because unlike a trade name it cannot be stretched. The value of an unambiguous identifier shows up where one is missing: TB-500 is sold both as full-length thymosin beta-4, about 4963 Da, and as a short fragment of about 889 Da, and CJC-1295 exists with and without a DAC complex, about 3647 g/mol against about 3368. An offer that gives a name and no mass has not said which of two molecules it means.

Regulatory status in the UK and the European Union

BPC-157 has no marketing authorisation. It is not a licensed medicine in the United Kingdom, it is not authorised by the European Medicines Agency, and it is not on a national register anywhere in the EU. It is also not an authorised food supplement, and it is not a novel food with a positive EU listing. Those absences can be checked at source: the EMA medicines database lists what has been authorised centrally in the EU, and the agency's account of how medicines are authorised sets out what an authorisation involves.

In the UK the governing instrument is the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. Regulation 46 provides that a person may not sell or supply, or offer to sell or supply, an unauthorised medicinal product, and regulation 2 defines what a medicinal product is, in two limbs: a substance presented as having properties of preventing or treating disease, or a substance that may be administered with a view to restoring, correcting or modifying a physiological function. The presentation limb is the one most sellers of this compound fall foul of. In law, an unauthorised chemical becomes an unauthorised medicine through the copy written beside it, without the molecule changing at all.

There is a published literature, and it is easy enough to find: reviews of the compound appear in Pharmaceuticals (2025) and the wider record can be searched on PubMed. Two honest observations about it, and no third. That work is overwhelmingly in animal models and in vitro systems. And whether any of it transfers to a person is not a question a product page gets to decide, so this one does not summarise findings or repeat conclusions.

Sport is a separate regime again. Anti-doping lists are maintained by sporting bodies, they are revised on their own schedule, and they are unrelated to whether a substance is a licensed medicine. Anyone competing under those rules checks the current list published by their own federation rather than anything written by a seller.

What "research use only" is, and what it is not

"Research use only" is a seller's statement of intended purpose. It is not a legal category in the UK or the EU, not a licence, and not a review by any authority. It says the material is not being offered as something to be used in people. It does not say the material is safe, checked, well made, or lawful to administer, and no regulator has looked at it because those three words were printed.

It is also not a quality claim, and this is where it gets misused. A page that leans on the phrase while saying nothing about who made the material, what was measured, or where the figures came from, has used a disclaimer as a substitute for disclosure.

Purity and peptide content are two different numbers

Purity by HPLC is a ratio. The sample is separated on a column, the peaks are integrated, and the purity figure is the area of the main peak as a share of all the peak area detected. It answers: of the peptide material the method saw, how much was the target sequence?

Peptide content is a quantity. It is the proportion of the mass in the vial that is peptide at all, the balance being residual water and the counter-ions left over from synthesis and freeze-drying, typically acetate or trifluoroacetate. A vial can be entirely honestly described as high purity and still contain noticeably less peptide than the label mass implies, because the two figures answer different questions. Neither can be calculated from the other, and a certificate that offers only the first has answered the easier one.

The water content sits underneath both of them and is measured separately, by Karl Fischer titration. A lyophilisate holds some residual moisture; that is ordinary, and it is part of the reason peptide content is never 100%. The guides on purity and peptide content and how to read a certificate of analysis go through the whole document line by line.

Why the mass figure matters more than the headline percentage

Purity says how much of one thing is in the vial. Mass says which thing it is. A sample can be 99% one compound and still be 99% the wrong compound, and the only figure that catches a substitution is the measured mass set beside the mass calculated from the sequence - 1419.53 g/mol in this case. Read that pair first. The headline percentage is the number designed to be read first, which is a reason to read it second.

Then read the impurity peaks. A batch reported at a given purity with one large impurity is a different material from a batch reported at the same purity with four small ones, and a report that shows only the main peak has not told you which you have.

Handling, storage and reconstitution

The material is a white lyophilised powder in a vial closed with a butyl rubber stopper and an aluminium crimp cap. Unopened, it is kept at −20 °C and protected from light; the dried powder tolerates up to 30 days at ordinary room temperature in transit, which is why parcels of it do not travel on ice. Those figures are handling convention for lyophilised peptides rather than the result of a stability study on any particular lot, and they are stated here as convention.

Reconstitution is arithmetic, not judgement. The powder dissolves in bacteriostatic water, and the volume of solvent chosen is what fixes the concentration of the solution: a 5 mg vial made up to 2.5 ml gives 2 mg/ml, and the same vial made up to 5 ml gives 1 mg/ml. The peptide calculator does the conversion in both directions. No quantity for any purpose is recommended on this site. The peptide and the solvent are also listed together, as two separately manufactured items with two separate batch numbers.

What Peptorium publishes about this material

This page publishes identity: the sequence GEPPPGKPADDAGLV, the molecular formula, a calculated mass of 1419.53 g/mol and CAS 137525-51-0. Each of those can be checked against a public register rather than taken on trust. Purity, peptide content and water describe one batch rather than a compound. Those figures belong on a certificate of analysis issued by the laboratory that tested that batch, and they travel with the material itself.

What to ask before buying BPC-157 from anyone

• Is it the free peptide or the arginate salt, and does the stated mass per vial refer to the peptide or to the salt?
• What is the batch number, and is there a certificate for that batch, or one certificate reused across the product?
• Does the certificate give a measured mass beside the theoretical 1419.53 g/mol, or only a purity percentage?
• Are the impurity peaks listed individually, and is there a chromatogram? For a proline-rich sequence this is where the deletion products would show.
• Is peptide content stated separately from purity, with water by Karl Fischer?
• Is the method named - RP-HPLC, ESI-MS - and is the test dated?
• Can the result be checked with the laboratory under its own report number, somewhere the seller does not control?
• Is the seller a registered company, in a named jurisdiction, at an address that exists?

What is not known

• What a particular vial contains cannot be known without analysing it - not from this page, not from a listing, and not from a certificate that cannot be tied to the vial by the batch number on its label.
• The published work is very largely animal and in vitro. Whether any of it transfers to humans is not settled, and this page does not settle it.
• Long-term stability of a lyophilisate outside the stated conditions has no reliable general answer; storage guidance is convention, not measurement.
• Whether an offer of this compound is lawful where you are is a question for your own jurisdiction, and the answer changes with how the offer is worded as well as with what is in the vial.

Frequently asked questions

Material described on this site is for laboratory and in vitro research use: it is not a medicine, not a food supplement and not a medical device, and nothing here is a recommendation to use it in humans or animals. The research declaration sets out what that means, and the retatrutide page asks the same questions in the same order about a different compound.