Peptide Clinical Trials in 2026: 890 Registered Studies Across 20 Compounds

The count

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, queried September 22, 2026. Seven records from one sponsor are excluded, as explained under Records we excluded. Statuses such as terminated, withdrawn and unknown are in the total but not in the two status columns.

Three tiers

Hundreds. Semaglutide and tirzepatide are approved drugs with large sponsors behind them, and the registry shows it. Semaglutide has 237 trials recruiting or active right now, which is more than the lifetime total of the other 18 compounds put together.

Dozens. This tier is compounds with a real development program. Cagrilintide and retatrutide are late-stage candidates with 22 and 14 Phase 3 entries. Thymosin alpha 1, tesamorelin and bremelanotide each reached approval somewhere. Thymosin beta 4 was developed as an eye and wound candidate under the RGN code names. NAD+ itself, as opposed to precursors such as nicotinamide riboside, is named in 18 trials.

A handful or none. BPC-157 has two entries, both Phase 1: a 2015 study whose status is now unknown, and a University of Arkansas study in rotator cuff repair that has not started recruiting. A third BPC-157 record, a Phase 2 trial listed as recruiting, is one of the excluded records described below. Ipamorelin finished two Phase 2 trials more than a decade ago. CJC-1295 has one Phase 2 trial, and it was terminated. GHK-Cu and MOTS-c have no counted trial. Each had one 2026 record, and both came from the excluded sponsor.

What a zero means

Zero registered trials is a statement about one US database. It is not a statement that no research exists.

Semax and Selank were developed in Russia, and their human studies were run and published there. Epithalon and Pinealon come from the same St. Petersburg research tradition. AOD-9604 went through human trials in Australia in the 2000s, before and outside this registry. KPV has a laboratory and animal literature. Our compound profiles cover each of these records in detail, for example the Semax research history and the MOTS-c trial breakdown.

What the registry does show is where prospective, registered human work is happening today. For most compounds sold as research materials, the published record is preclinical: cell culture, rodents, and sometimes a small older human study.

How we counted

1. For each compound we searched the intervention field of the registry for the compound name and its known code names and brand names. For BPC-157 that means BPC-157, BPC 157, Bepecin and PL 14736.
2. We kept only interventional studies. Observational studies were dropped.
3. We kept a study only if the compound is named in the study's own list of interventions or their listed other names. A search hit alone was not enough.
4. We counted unique registry numbers. A trial that tests cagrilintide with semaglutide appears in both rows and once in the 890 total.
5. We excluded records from a sponsor whose filings fail an integrity check. In September 2026 that removed seven records from one sponsor, described in the next section.

Step 3 matters. A raw search for NAD+ returns 264 studies, most of which test nicotinamide riboside or another precursor. Only 18 name NAD+ as the intervention. A raw search for MOTS-c returns 5 studies. Four of them only measure the peptide in blood, and the fifth is an excluded record. Our statistics page reports the raw search figure of 4 for BPC-157. The stricter rules here give 2. One of the four is a gummy product that does not name BPC-157 as its intervention, and one is an excluded record.

Limits. Intervention names are typed by sponsors, so an unusual spelling can be missed. The registry is US-centred. Registration tells you a study was planned. It does not tell you the study finished or published.

Records we excluded

In February and March 2026 a sponsor listed as Hudson Biotech registered eight trials on ClinicalTrials.gov. Seven are for compounds in this count: BPC-157, GHK-Cu, MOTS-c, TB-500, tesamorelin, tirzepatide and retatrutide. The eighth is for Melanotan II. We removed all seven from the count because the records do not hold up:

• All eight list the same single site, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, and the same contact person, whose email address uses a different company's domain.
• Six of the eight give a start date of February 2, 2026, and seven give a primary completion date of February 14, 2027.
• Two reuse Eli Lilly trial identities. The tirzepatide record carries the title of SURMOUNT-1, Lilly's completed obesity trial, and the retatrutide record uses Lilly's development code LY3437943. Lilly sponsors neither record.
• The TB-500 record says in its own summary: "This fictional study is an example of a ClinicalTrials.gov-style record."

ClinicalTrials.gov states that listing a study does not mean the US federal government has evaluated it. A registry number on its own is not evidence that a trial is running. The excluded records are BPC-157, GHK-Cu, MOTS-c, TB-500, tesamorelin, tirzepatide and retatrutide. We will count any of them again if the sponsor can be verified.

Why this matters for documentation

When a compound has two registered trials, the quality of the material used in laboratory work carries more weight, because there is less published human data to fall back on. Each Curo lot ships with its own certificate of analysis, and the help center explains how to verify a lot and what our testing standard covers. Our own third-party lot results are archived as an open dataset on Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22706906).

Cite this data

You may quote the table and the figures with a link to this page. Please cite ClinicalTrials.gov as the underlying source. We rerun the count each quarter and mark the date at the top.

Frequently asked questions

How many clinical trials does BPC-157 have?

Two interventional trials on ClinicalTrials.gov name BPC-157 as an intervention, as of September 22, 2026: a 2015 Phase 1 study with unknown status and a Phase 1 study at the University of Arkansas that has not started recruiting. None is Phase 3 and none is marked completed. A third record, a Phase 2 trial listed as recruiting, is excluded because its sponsor's filings fail an integrity check.

Which peptide has the most registered clinical trials?

Of the 20 compounds counted here, semaglutide, with 538 interventional trials and 165 Phase 3 entries. Tirzepatide is second with 210.

Why do Semax, Selank and Epithalon show no trials?

The count covers one registry, ClinicalTrials.gov. These compounds were developed and studied in Russia, and that work is published in the literature but is not recorded in the US registry.

Does a registered trial mean the compound is approved?

No. Registration records that a study was planned. It says nothing about the result. Retatrutide has 32 registered trials and no approval anywhere as of September 2026.

Can I reproduce this count?

Yes. The method section lists the five rules. The registry API is public and free, and the counts will move as sponsors add and update records.

Is every ClinicalTrials.gov record a real trial?

Not necessarily. ClinicalTrials.gov states that listing a study does not mean the US federal government has evaluated it. In this count we found eight records from one sponsor that share one site and one contact, reuse Eli Lilly trial identities, and in one case call themselves fictional. We excluded the seven that fall inside our 20 compounds.