Frontiers Pharmacology: Pharmacokinetics, distribution, metabolism, and excretion
He et al./Frontiers/2022
Why It Matters
This is the first pharmacokinetic study of BPC-157, and the numbers are sobering — the compound clears from the body in less than 30 minutes, and most of what you inject never makes it into circulation. If you're considering BPC-157 for injury recovery, understand that the actual drug exposure is brief and limited, which raises questions about whether the dosing protocols people use online have any scientific basis. This is preclinical animal data only — no human pharmacokinetics exist yet.
Key Findings
- BPC-157 has an elimination half-life of less than 30 minutes in both rats and dogs after intravenous or intramuscular administration
- Absolute bioavailability after intramuscular injection was 14-19% in rats and 45-51% in dogs, meaning most of the injected dose never reaches systemic circulation
- The peptide is rapidly broken down into small fragments and individual amino acids, which then enter normal amino acid metabolism pathways
- Main excretion routes are urine and bile, with the compound showing linear pharmacokinetics across different doses
- The compound demonstrated dose-proportional exposure in both species, but the brief half-life means drug levels drop quickly after each dose