Peptides that are often mentioned in the online “peptide community” (TB-4/TB-500, GHK-Cu, Tesamorelin, Ipamorelin, Tirzepatide, etc.) all have stronger evidence and “origin stories” than BPC-157. Until your post, I didn’t realize that BPC’s background was so shaky. Ironically, BPC is one of the most popular peptides in such communities, as far as I can tell.
Thinking through it I’ve come up with some possibilities for what might be going on
1. Complete Fabrication Predrag deliberately fabricated everything, with the amino sequence being entirely random and having no real therapeutic effect. His 30 years of research are fraudulent, with collaborators having varying levels of awareness/involvement.
Unresolved Questions:
How do we explain the independent researchers in Taiwan/China/Korea? Are they complicit or just publishing invalid results? What’s the motivation behind such an elaborate and long-running scam? Why establish a company and pursue patents if it’s entirely fraudulent? How has no one in the fitness/biohacking community noticed it’s completely bunk?
2. Partial Truth with Obscured Origins The origin story may be fabricated or obscured, but the peptide itself has genuine therapeutic benefits. His animal studies, while sometimes flawed in design, are fundamentally honest. Foreign research corroborates effectiveness.
Unresolved Questions:
What is the true source of the sequence? Is there any real connection to gastric juices? Why doesn’t it match known proteins? How plausible is the existence of an undiscovered stomach protein?
3. Sincere but Incompetent Predrag genuinely believes in his work but is mistaken. The peptide is random and ineffective, with positive results stemming from poor methodology. Foreign researchers’ results similarly flawed.
Unresolved Questions:
How could consistently positive results with large effect sizes persist for 30 years if the peptide is truly ineffective? How did multiple independent researchers reach similar conclusions through flawed methods? How has no one in the fitness/biohacking community noticed it’s completely bunk?
4. Alternative Explanations Other possibilities or complex combinations of the above scenarios not yet considered.
I’m at 10%, 25%, 50%, 15%. What about you @ChristianKl?
How could consistently positive results with large effect sizes persist for 30 years if the peptide is truly ineffective?
A majority of research studies in homeopathy find clinical effects. If you however limited yourself to high quality research papers, homeopathy seems to provide no clinical benefits. There are plenty of anecdotal reports of people getting large effect sizes from homeopathy.
It’s the key argument for evidence-based medicine. Various placebo effects frequently make people believe that they have effective treatments when the treatment itself does nothing. While I argued that you could switch to prediction-based medicine and have an alternative to evidence-based medicine, medicine by anecdotes might just be a bad paradigm.
How do we explain the independent researchers in Taiwan/China/Korea? Are they complicit or just publishing invalid results?
Any honest researcher, that publishes research showing that BCP-157 is great, should be interested in what the protein actually does in the normal metabolism. Not doing the literature review to find out that BCP-157 does not seem to come from an exciting protein suggests complicity.
Publishing negative results is generally hard and there’s little checks to scientific fraud in the far east.
Why establish a company and pursue patents if it’s entirely fraudulent?
As long as people are willing to buy a treatment the company makes money even if the patients don’t get results. BCP-157 is popular.
How plausible is the existence of an undiscovered stomach protein?
We sequenced the genome of most mammalian species, so there are no unknown mammalian proteins. To have an unknown undiscovered stomach protein, it would need to be produced by a bacteria that lives in the stomach that nobody has identified and sequenced. That seems implausible in 2025 given that we have shotgun sequencing to identify all bacteria in a given area. Remember that the bacteria would need to produce enough of the protein for the protein to be harvested the way Predrag claimed.
How has no one in the fitness/biohacking community noticed it’s completely bunk?
That does suggest that there’s a problem with those communities and people in general not doing deep research. Even when I emailed the people at Examine.com, that wasn’t enough to get them to update their article to show that BCP-157 is likely complete bunk. The communities seem to be trend-driven. Influences make a lot of money with affiliate deals.
I’m at 10%, 25%, 50%, 15%. What about you @ChristianKl?
When you inject a random peptide, you get an inflammation response in the area where you injected it. There might be cases where that produces a useful therapeutic effect.
Apart from that I would give complete fabrication maybe 95%.
I focused my post on the argument that the BCP-157 doesn’t come from a know protein, but that isn’t the only argument to be made.
If Big Pharma companies would believe that BCP-157 is real, they would likely want to produce drugs that target the mechanisms through which BCP-157 produces it’s effects.
Bryan Krause answer to my Stackexchange post analysis the implausibility of the early BCP-157 research in more detail.
It’s been a while since I looked into the animal research, but from what I remember given the size of BCP-157, it shouldn’t be absorbed from the intestines into the blood, but the animal research suggests it has some effects when ingested orally, that would not just require it to have an effect but also be absorbed from the intestines into the blood. That’s another sign that the animal studies are crap.
Correction: it’s examine.com not .org
Peptides that are often mentioned in the online “peptide community” (TB-4/TB-500, GHK-Cu, Tesamorelin, Ipamorelin, Tirzepatide, etc.) all have stronger evidence and “origin stories” than BPC-157. Until your post, I didn’t realize that BPC’s background was so shaky. Ironically, BPC is one of the most popular peptides in such communities, as far as I can tell.
Thinking through it I’ve come up with some possibilities for what might be going on
1. Complete Fabrication
Predrag deliberately fabricated everything, with the amino sequence being entirely random and having no real therapeutic effect. His 30 years of research are fraudulent, with collaborators having varying levels of awareness/involvement.
Unresolved Questions:
How do we explain the independent researchers in Taiwan/China/Korea? Are they complicit or just publishing invalid results?
What’s the motivation behind such an elaborate and long-running scam?
Why establish a company and pursue patents if it’s entirely fraudulent?
How has no one in the fitness/biohacking community noticed it’s completely bunk?
2. Partial Truth with Obscured Origins
The origin story may be fabricated or obscured, but the peptide itself has genuine therapeutic benefits. His animal studies, while sometimes flawed in design, are fundamentally honest. Foreign research corroborates effectiveness.
Unresolved Questions:
What is the true source of the sequence?
Is there any real connection to gastric juices?
Why doesn’t it match known proteins?
How plausible is the existence of an undiscovered stomach protein?
3. Sincere but Incompetent
Predrag genuinely believes in his work but is mistaken. The peptide is random and ineffective, with positive results stemming from poor methodology. Foreign researchers’ results similarly flawed.
Unresolved Questions:
How could consistently positive results with large effect sizes persist for 30 years if the peptide is truly ineffective?
How did multiple independent researchers reach similar conclusions through flawed methods?
How has no one in the fitness/biohacking community noticed it’s completely bunk?
4. Alternative Explanations
Other possibilities or complex combinations of the above scenarios not yet considered.
I’m at 10%, 25%, 50%, 15%. What about you @ChristianKl?
A majority of research studies in homeopathy find clinical effects. If you however limited yourself to high quality research papers, homeopathy seems to provide no clinical benefits. There are plenty of anecdotal reports of people getting large effect sizes from homeopathy.
It’s the key argument for evidence-based medicine. Various placebo effects frequently make people believe that they have effective treatments when the treatment itself does nothing. While I argued that you could switch to prediction-based medicine and have an alternative to evidence-based medicine, medicine by anecdotes might just be a bad paradigm.
Any honest researcher, that publishes research showing that BCP-157 is great, should be interested in what the protein actually does in the normal metabolism. Not doing the literature review to find out that BCP-157 does not seem to come from an exciting protein suggests complicity.
Publishing negative results is generally hard and there’s little checks to scientific fraud in the far east.
As long as people are willing to buy a treatment the company makes money even if the patients don’t get results. BCP-157 is popular.
We sequenced the genome of most mammalian species, so there are no unknown mammalian proteins. To have an unknown undiscovered stomach protein, it would need to be produced by a bacteria that lives in the stomach that nobody has identified and sequenced. That seems implausible in 2025 given that we have shotgun sequencing to identify all bacteria in a given area. Remember that the bacteria would need to produce enough of the protein for the protein to be harvested the way Predrag claimed.
That does suggest that there’s a problem with those communities and people in general not doing deep research. Even when I emailed the people at Examine.com, that wasn’t enough to get them to update their article to show that BCP-157 is likely complete bunk. The communities seem to be trend-driven. Influences make a lot of money with affiliate deals.
When you inject a random peptide, you get an inflammation response in the area where you injected it. There might be cases where that produces a useful therapeutic effect.
Apart from that I would give complete fabrication maybe 95%.
I focused my post on the argument that the BCP-157 doesn’t come from a know protein, but that isn’t the only argument to be made.
If Big Pharma companies would believe that BCP-157 is real, they would likely want to produce drugs that target the mechanisms through which BCP-157 produces it’s effects.
Bryan Krause answer to my Stackexchange post analysis the implausibility of the early BCP-157 research in more detail.
It’s been a while since I looked into the animal research, but from what I remember given the size of BCP-157, it shouldn’t be absorbed from the intestines into the blood, but the animal research suggests it has some effects when ingested orally, that would not just require it to have an effect but also be absorbed from the intestines into the blood. That’s another sign that the animal studies are crap.