What BPC-157 is
BPC-157 is a synthetic fragment of a gastric protective protein, studied almost entirely in animal models of tendon, ligament, gut, and vascular injury. It has no human trials of consequence, no approved form anywhere, and sits on the FDA's 503A category 2 list, which bars US compounding pharmacies from making it. Everything about human dosing is community convention.
None of that has dented its popularity: it is the most widely used repair peptide in the gray market, usually run at 250 to 500 mcg once or twice daily near the injury site or systemically.
What we do not know
- There are no published randomized controlled trials in humans. Not few: none. The entire evidence base is animal work, much of it from one research group.
- No human pharmacokinetics are published, so oral versus injected bioavailability in people is genuinely unknown rather than merely debated.
- Long-term safety in humans is unstudied, and its angiogenic mechanism has never been assessed for tumor risk in people.
Reconstitution math
Concentration is everything: the same 5 mg vial gives a different draw for every amount of bacteriostatic water you add. The table uses the common 2 mL setup for each vial size, which puts every unit on a U-100 insulin syringe at 25 mcg for the default vial. Dashes mark draws too small to measure or larger than the syringe.
| Vial | BAC water | Concentration | 250 mcg | 500 mcg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 mg | 2 mL | 1 mg/mL | 25 u | 50 u |
| 5 mg | 2 mL | 2.5 mg/mL | 10 u | 20 u |
| 10 mg | 2 mL | 5 mg/mL | 5 u | 10 u |
Dosing and protocol
Community protocol: 250 to 500 mcg, one to two times daily, typically 4 to 8 week cycles.
The standard community cycle is 250 to 500 mcg one to two times daily for four to eight weeks. The draws are small: 250 mcg from a 5 mg vial with 2 mL of water is 10 units on an insulin syringe. Pairing it with TB-500 (the Wolverine blend) is the most common stack; see the blend calculator for combined-vial math.
Pharmacokinetics
No curve is shown, on purpose.
No human pharmacokinetic studies exist for BPC-157. Rodent data show a plasma half-life under 30 minutes (He et al., 2022), yet its effects on healing are studied over weeks. The peptide clears long before its downstream effects play out, so a concentration curve would imply a precision the data does not support.
How it is thought to work
A synthetic 15-amino-acid sequence derived from a protein found in gastric juice. Animal work reports effects on angiogenesis, growth factor signaling and nitric oxide pathways, which is the proposed basis for its healing claims.
What the evidence supports
This table grades how well each outcome has been studied in humans, not how well BPC-157 works. A strong grade means the question was asked properly, and the answer may still have been negative. Nothing here is inherited from a drug class, a close analog, or the parent molecule of a fragment.
| Outcome | Strongest published evidence |
|---|---|
| Gastrointestinal protection | Animal only |
| Tendon and ligament healing | Animal only |
| Any outcome in humans | No data |
Storage and handling
Lyophilized vials keep best cold, dark, and dry; refrigeration is the community default and freezing lyophilized powder is common for long holds. After reconstitution, refrigerate at 2 to 8 C, do not freeze the solution, and date the vial. Bacteriostatic water's preservative keeps multi-dose use practical for about 28 days by USP convention, though our 120-day stability study found the preservative itself outlasts that window.
Got a certificate of analysis with your vial? Run it through our COA Reader: it reads the report in plain English, checks purity and mass against the label claim, and links the testing lab’s own verification page. Our guide to reading a COA explains what the numbers do and do not tell you.
Sources
- He et al., Pharmacokinetics of BPC-157, Frontiers in Pharmacology 2022
- Sikiric et al., BPC-157 review, Current Pharmaceutical Design 2020
- FDA 503A bulk substances category 2 listing (2023)