Is Nesfatin-1 legal in the United Kingdom?

Sold as a weight-management peptide and never administered to a human being in any published study. Its receptor has not been identified. Every human dataset is observational measurement of circulating levels, and a meta-analysis in polycystic ovary syndrome found no difference from controls at all, standardised mean difference 0.03, 95% CI -0.71 to 0.77.

Nesfatin-1 is the clearest case in this batch of a compound sold ahead of its evidence, because there is no human interventional evidence of any kind. It is an 82 residue cleavage product of nucleobindin-2, annotated in UniProt P80303 at residues 25 to 106.

Mechanism: Proposed, and incompletely so. Nesfatin-1 is cleaved from nucleobindin-2 and, in rodents, reduces food intake and body weight when administered centrally, by a route that does not require leptin signalling.

Regulatory history: Nesfatin-1 is an endogenous peptide fragment and is not a medicine. There is no approved product, no investigational product, and no registered interventional trial in which nesfatin-1 is the intervention.

Licenses medicines for the UK market. A compound without a marketing authorisation is an unlicensed medicine, which can only lawfully be supplied for human use through a prescriber under the specials scheme, not sold as a research product.

The classification above is the The Longevity Archive reading of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listings for Nesfatin-1 at the reviewed date, not a legal opinion. Rules change, and importing, prescribing and possessing a compound can each be treated differently. Check the regulator directly before acting on anything here.