BPC-157 Research Peptide

BPC-157 is a 15-residue peptide, Gly-Glu-Pro-Pro-Pro-Gly-Lys-Pro-Ala-Asp-Asp-Ala-Gly-Leu-Val (GEPPPGKPADDAGLV in one-letter code), with a molecular weight of about 1,419.5 g/mol. It copies part of a larger protein found in human gastric juice and comes as a lyophilised white powder, in 5mg and 10mg vials. It is also written BPC 157 or BPC157, and older papers use PL 14736, PL-10 or bepecin.

It came out of Predrag Sikirić’s pharmacology group at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in Croatia, which published the first papers in the early 1990s and has produced a large share of the literature ever since. Independent teams, notably at Chang Gung University in Taiwan, later added their own cell-culture and angiogenesis studies, a useful second line of evidence.

The commonly referenced CAS number is 137525-51-0, and the molecular formula is C62H98N16O22. Both describe the 15-residue chain itself, with its free amino and carboxyl ends.

Every word in that phrase earns its place. “Pentadeca” means fifteen, matching its 15 residues. “Gastric” points to its source in human gastric juice. “Stable” reflects reports that, unlike most short peptides, it is not rapidly broken down in gastric juice, a feature the Zagreb group puts front and centre in its paper titles.

PL 14736 was the development code used when the Zagreb-based pharmaceutical company Pliva took BPC-157 into early clinical studies for inflammatory bowel disease in the early 2000s. The programme never produced a licensed product, and a 2026 pharmaceutics review notes that there is still no approved formulation of BPC-157 anywhere and no completed phase II trial. That unlicensed status is also why the World Anti-Doping Agency has listed BPC-157 since 1 January 2022 under S0, its category for pharmacological substances without current approval for human therapeutic use.

Only to a very limited extent. A systematic review of the orthopaedic literature up to mid-2024 included 35 preclinical studies and a single clinical one, a small retrospective case series. A later review counted fewer than 30 participants in total across three uncontrolled pilot studies, so nearly everything known about BPC-157 still comes from cells and animals.

They come from entirely unrelated proteins. BPC-157 is a stomach-derived 15-mer, whereas TB-500 is built on the actin-binding stretch of thymosin beta-4. In cell work BPC-157 is mostly linked with growth-factor receptors and vascular signalling, while TB-500 research centres on how cells handle actin as they move. Our article BPC-157 vs TB-500 puts them side by side, and TB-500 is available on its own.

Wolverine Stack is the nickname researchers use for BPC-157 and TB-500 combined. Crown Peptides supplies it as one pre-blended vial, the Wolverine Stack, in 5mg + 5mg and 10mg + 10mg, for studies that want the two peptides at an equal ratio from the start.

The connection runs through a receptor rather than the hormone itself. In a 2014 microarray study of rat tendon fibroblasts, the growth hormone receptor was one of the most strongly increased genes after BPC-157 exposure. When growth hormone was then added, those primed cells proliferated more, with JAK2 signalling switched on, which suggests BPC-157 made the cells more responsive rather than acting as a growth-hormone releaser.

The intact peptide has a monoisotopic mass of about 1,418.7 Da, so it typically appears as singly and doubly protonated ions near m/z 1,419.7 and 710.4. The more telling fingerprint comes when that ion is broken apart. Bonds on the N-terminal side of proline tend to cleave readily, so the Pro-Pro-Pro run at positions 3 to 5, plus a fourth proline at position 8, leaves a recognisable fragment pattern that helps distinguish true BPC-157 from a scrambled or shortened sequence of the same mass.

Think about how long the project runs and how many experimental groups it needs. The 5mg vial is a neat size for pilot work and cell-culture assays, where working concentrations are low and one vial goes a long way. The 10mg vial halves the number of reconstitutions over a longer animal series. Buying five or ten vials together lowers the price of each and makes it easier to keep a whole study on one batch covered by a single Certificate of Analysis.

No. The gastric-juice findings describe how the peptide behaved in a particular experiment, not how it copes with months on a warm shelf. As a freeze-dried powder it keeps best at -20°C, dry and out of the light. Laboratories commonly dissolve it in bacteriostatic water and then hold the solution under validated conditions; the storage guide has more detail.