What to know about melanotan II
Melanotan II is an unapproved “tanning peptide” that stimulates melanin signaling. The hard part is not the biology. It’s the safety, skin-risk, and unregulated supply chain.
Tag
Methods
Pages related to Methods.
The facts behind Reta
Retatrutide, often called “Reta,” is an investigational triple-agonist weight-loss drug. Early trials look impressive, but the main questions are long-term safety, tolerability, and what happens outside tightly run studies.
Peptide gels that act like depots
Peptide drugs fail for a boring reason: delivery. Self-assembling peptide hydrogels try to fix that by turning peptides into local depots that hold and release medicine over time.
What looser peptide compounding rules would actually change
If FDA expands which peptides can be compounded, the biggest effects will likely be supply-chain, liability, and access shifts, not an overnight jump in evidence quality.
Peptides that can dial down cortisol
A few human peptides have evidence for blunting cortisol responses in specific settings. This is what we actually know, what’s still unclear, and why ‘lower cortisol’ is a tricky goal.
Why peptides feel like magic (and what they actually are)
Peptides can look like biological spells: tiny molecules that seem to fix unrelated problems. The real story is messier and more useful: specificity, delivery constraints, and the evidence ladder.
Peptides on surfaces, not injections: the biomaterials play
Some of the most practical peptide ‘therapies’ aren’t injections at all. They’re tiny signals tethered to materials, designed to help healing happen in the right place.
How peptide hype evolves (and a verification checklist)
A practical field guide to how new peptides and ‘next-gen analogs’ spread online, what usually gets exaggerated, and the minimum evidence needed before you treat marketing as reality.
Peptides 101
A plain-language guide to what peptides are, why people care, and how to read this site.
A new trick for peptides to enter cells
Researchers report benzaldehyde-tagged cell-penetrating peptides can anchor to membrane proteins via reversible imine chemistry, helping cargo escape endosomes and reach the cytosol.
A bacterial ‘lipoprotein’ machine can be repurposed to build lipidated macrocyclic peptides
A 2026 PNAS paper reports a way to co-opt bacterial lipoprotein processing to biosynthesize lipidated macrocyclic peptides. It is a methods advance that could matter for lipopeptide discovery and tuning pharmacology.
Why many peptide breakthroughs fail in synthesis
A 2026 Nature Chemistry paper suggests overall amino acid composition, more than specific motifs, can predict when peptides will aggregate on-resin during solid-phase synthesis. If it generalizes, it could turn synthesis guesswork into planning.
How to read peptide claims without getting hypnotized by mechanism
Peptides are real biology, but they are also a perfect vehicle for wishful thinking. This field guide helps separate molecule identity, evidence quality, and marketing.