Stable Gastric Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 as a Therapy and Safety Key (MDPI 2025)
/MDPI/2025
Why It Matters
This paper caught my attention because BPC-157 has become wildly popular in biohacking circles for injury recovery and gut healing. The review shows impressive preclinical effects — wound healing, blood vessel formation, protection against drug toxicity — but here's the reality check: almost all evidence comes from animal studies by a small group of Croatian researchers. No large-scale human trials exist. The safety profile looks clean in rodents, but that's not the same as proven safe in humans at the doses people are actually using.
Key Findings
- BPC-157 demonstrated protective effects across multiple injury models in rats and mice: tendon healing, ligament repair, bone fracture recovery, and muscle damage from various toxins
- The peptide showed gastric protective properties in rodent ulcer models and appeared to counteract NSAIDs, alcohol, and other chemical-induced damage to the GI tract
- Angiogenesis (new blood vessel formation) emerged as a consistent mechanism, with BPC-157 influencing VEGF and nitric oxide pathways in animal tissue
- Safety data in animals showed no toxic effects across wide dose ranges, but formal pharmacokinetics, long-term human safety studies, and toxicology reports in humans are absent
- Nearly all published research originates from one research group in Croatia — independent replication by other labs is minimal, raising questions about generalizability