What are research peptides?

A peptide is a short chain of amino acids. Research peptides are peptides supplied for in-vitro laboratory and analytical work, rather than for administration to humans or animals. That distinction is the whole subject of this page, because almost every misunderstanding in this category comes from collapsing it.

Peptide, protein, where the line sits

Amino acids link into chains. By convention, chains up to roughly fifty residues are called peptides and longer ones proteins, but that boundary is a naming habit rather than a chemical fact. BPC-157 at fifteen residues is plainly a peptide. Insulin at fifty-one sits on the line and gets called both.

Length matters practically rather than definitionally: shorter chains are cheaper to synthesise, more stable, and easier to characterise, which is why most compounds studied this way are short.

Three categories people collapse into one

Category	Made under	Intended for
Approved medicine	Regulated manufacturing, tested and released	Administration, under a marketing authorisation
Compounded preparation	A licensed pharmacy, for a named recipient	Administration, under a prescription
Research compound	Chemical synthesis, no regulatory release	In-vitro laboratory and analytical work

These are three different articles, not three grades of one. The same molecule can exist in all three categories and still not be the same product in each, because what differs is not the chemistry but what is known about the specific material in the specific vial, and who is accountable for knowing it.

Why they arrive as a powder

Almost everything here ships lyophilised — freeze-dried. Removing the water removes what chemical degradation needs, so the solid is stable at ambient temperature through shipping and keeps well in storage.

Adding a diluent reverses that. A reconstituted vial is refrigerated from that point and has a usable window measured in weeks rather than months. The step between the two states is covered in reconstitution, and what changes afterwards in storage and handling.

What "research use only" actually means

All products listed are sold strictly for in-vitro laboratory research and analytical use. They are not drugs, foods, cosmetics or medical devices, and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

It is a statement about category, not quality. It says the material sits outside the frameworks that govern medicines — the manufacturing controls, the testing regimes, the release criteria, and the accountable party behind them. Research material has been through none of that.

The full explanation covers what that means in practice, including why no supplier operating honestly in this category will advise you on administration.

How this catalogue is organised

89 compounds, indexed three ways, because researchers arrive from different directions. By mechanism — what the molecule is. By research area — what it is studied for. By format — how it ships.

So semaglutide and retatrutide sit under GLP-1 peptides, MOTS-c and SS-31 under mitochondrial peptides, and Epithalon under bioregulators and longevity research at once.

Where two compounds are routinely confused, there is a side-by-side comparison setting out what actually differs.

What this site does not tell you

No dosing, no administration protocols, no therapeutic claims, and no purity figures. The first three because supplying research material and advising on human use are incompatible activities. The last because we run no testing programme, and a supplier printing numbers it cannot stand behind is worse than one printing none.