New Peptides and Longevity Compounds in 2026: What Is Actually New, What Is Newly Legal, and What Is Just New to Vendors

What are the most promising peptides for 2026?

We added 68 compounds to the database in September 2026, after going through the drug industry's pipeline and what the peptide community is actually talking about. This post sorts them. Every name links to a profile with its studies. Each entry says how much evidence it has, using the same five labels we use everywhere: proper studies in people, small or watching-only studies in people, animal, in a dish, or none.

Part 1: drugs in development with results in people

Weight loss and blood sugar

Two drugs we already covered changed status. Orforglipron was approved on April 1, 2026 as Foundayo, the first GLP-1 pill. Retatrutide reported 28.3% weight loss at 80 weeks in its big TRIUMPH-1 study in May 2026. For how those numbers compare across studies of different lengths, see Retatrutide vs tirzepatide vs semaglutide vs the pill.

Protecting muscle

Liver, longevity and brain

• Trontinemab cleared the plaque linked to Alzheimer's in 91 percent of patients in seven months, with few of the brain-swelling side effects seen on scans. A large final-stage study is running.
• Three drugs that copy the hormone FGF21, efruxifermin, pegozafermin and monthly efimosfermin, are in large final-stage studies for fatty liver disease. Efruxifermin reversed liver scarring (cirrhosis) in some patients at 96 weeks.
• Foselutoclax is the furthest along of the drugs that clear worn-out cells. For swelling at the back of the eye from diabetes, it matched an existing injected drug on eyesight.
• BGE-102 blocks an inflammation switch called NLRP3. In an early study, it cut a blood marker of inflammation (hsCRP) by a typical 86 percent in two weeks.
• ER-100 became the first treatment that partly resets the age markers on cells to be given to a person, in June 2026.
• RTR242, a pill from Retro Biosciences that boosts the cell's clean-up system, started an early study in December 2025. There are no results on whether it works yet.

Part 2: what people are talking about, and how much evidence each has

We added others too. They don't all have the same amount of evidence, so it is worth sorting them properly instead of lumping them all under 'no studies in people'.

• A lot of data in people. AICAR was tested in 3,080 heart surgery patients in the RED-CABG study, which was stopped because it wasn't helping. SkQ1 has a 240-person dry eye study against a dummy drop, plus two big studies of 452 and 610 people. GB-115 has a finished 220-patient big study in Russia and a 200-patient study against the drug afobazole. Ac-SDKP has been measured in people since the 1990s: a single 50 mg dose of the blood pressure drug captopril raises blood levels about 5.5 times. A related drug, goralatide, was tested in 84 cancer patients to protect their blood cells during chemo, and it did nothing on any blood count.
• A finished early safety study in people. CMS-121 finished a four-part safety study in 99 people in 2022. Single doses up to 1,800 mg, and 900 mg a day for a week, mostly caused no problems. There are no results on whether it works. Trodusquemine went through four early studies between 2007 and 2018 in roughly 97 people, and none has ever published a result. People really did take it, but nothing can be learned from that.
• Only studies that watched people or used tissue, nobody given a dose. People with muscle loss from aging (sarcopenia) have less trigonelline in their blood, and more of it goes along with stronger muscles. Every study that actually gave trigonelline was in worms and mice. MGF has muscle samples from young people showing the body makes more of it after weight training. That is not evidence for injecting it. AHK-Cu rests on one 2007 study of human hair roots kept alive in a dish.
• The parent drug was tested, this one wasn't. IGF-1 DES has no studies of its own. Its approved parent, mecasermin, caused low blood sugar in 49 percent of children in its main study. B7-33 has none either. The relaxin drug it comes from was tested in RELAX-AHF-2, in 6,545 patients, and it failed on both of its main goals. N-acetyl Semax amidate has none. Semax itself has studies from Russia, including 110 stroke patients on 6,000 micrograms a day. None was listed outside Russia, and nobody else has repeated them.
• Small tests in people that found no benefit. Orexin-A was tried as a nose spray in three tiny studies of about 29 people with narcolepsy, and none showed it kept people awake. The orexin drugs that do work are different small-molecule pills.
• No study in people of any kind. SR9009, PTD-DBM, and four lab-made Khavinson peptides: Cortagen, Bronchogen, Livagen and Chonluten. The Khavinson peptides need plain words, because this is where other sites are vaguest. Several of those papers say 'patients' in the title. But they took blood from patients and added the peptide to the cells in a dish. No person has ever been given any of the four in a published study. Khavinson's group does have real studies in people of epithalamin, thymalin, thymogen, prostatilen and cortexin. That record does not carry over to the lab-made peptides sold under other names. Pancragen belongs to the same family.

FLGR-242 and RTR242 are not the same thing

One more mix-up is worth heading off, because it is the strongest-sounding case for FLGR-242. Follistatin has been given to people, as gene therapy injected into muscle. In one early study, 6 men with Becker muscular dystrophy changed how far they could walk in six minutes by plus 58, plus 125, 0, plus 108, plus 29 and 0 metres (Molecular Therapy, 2015). A second study in 6 patients with inclusion body myositis reported plus 56.0 metres a year, against minus 25.8 in 8 untreated patients (Molecular Therapy, 2017). Neither had a proper comparison group, and in both, two of the six did not respond. Both gave a gene, with FDA sign-off, in a muscle clinic. None of that is evidence for injecting a protein piece bought online. The two should never be talked about as if they were the same thing.

Part 3: what is newly legal

Nothing, yet. In July 2026, an FDA advisory panel voted to let pharmacies make BPC-157, TB-500, KPV, MOTS-c, Epitalon and Semax. But the votes are not binding, and the FDA has not acted. The details, with vote counts and what FDA staff thought, are in the FDA peptide status tracker.

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