Research Desk · Analysis and evidence audits
Analysis, not headlines.
Weekly reads of human trials, evidence audits and regulatory moves — tied to the monographs in the codex, with a verdict at the end.
Retatrutide's phase 2 numbers still look unreal. They aren't.
The triple agonist produced a 24% mean weight loss in a 48-week trial — a result no approved drug has matched since. What the data actually says, and what it doesn't.
CagriSema vs retatrutide: the incretin arms race, scored on data
Novo Nordisk filed first. Eli Lilly's molecule is stronger. A head-to-head read of REDEFINE 1, REDEFINE 4 and TRIUMPH-4 — without the marketing.
BPC-157 has 200+ animal studies and one core problem
The most popular research peptide in the world has never completed a single registered human trial. Why that gap matters more than any individual rodent result.
Tesamorelin: the most interesting approved peptide nobody talks about
An FDA-approved GHRH analogue with real RCT data on visceral fat — and a cautionary tale about what happens when a drug's approved use doesn't match the market's imagination.
Epitalon and the one-school evidence problem
The most famous bioregulator peptide has decades of publications — almost all from a single Russian research school. What that means, and what it doesn't.
The Wolverine stack: an honest audit of the recovery combo
BPC-157 plus TB-500 is the most-used injury protocol in peptide spaces. We graded each component separately — then the combination.
Melanotan II: banned, unapproved, and still on every feed
The tanning peptide is a case study in regulatory asymmetry — its safer sibling got approved, its aphrodisiac sibling got approved, and MT-II itself got warning letters.
GLOW stack: the rare case where skin peptides have human data
GHK-Cu, argireline and Matrixyl are marketed with sci-fi language — but unlike most peptide skincare, two of the three actually ran human trials. We read them.
The two lives of GHK-Cu: why the serum and the vial are different products
One molecule, sold as a face cream and as an injectable vial, gets discussed as if they were the same thing. The evidence bases could not be more different.