The science behind the peptide boom came out of junk DNA

A pediatric endocrinologist at UCLA hunting a protein tied to insulin resistance kept pulling out a chain of only twenty-four amino acids he could not place. That peptide, humanin, was traced to mitochondrial DNA, part of the ninety-eight per cent of the human genome long written off as junk.

Junk DNA turned out to carry instructions for peptides nobody had studied. The same lab, now at USC, identified MOTS-c, which switches on the cellular machinery exercise normally turns on, and older mice given it ran twice as long as untreated ones. Promising enough to build a company around, MOTS-c reached a Phase I clinical trial and stopped there: its short half-life meant several injections a day, and the funding ran out.

What has not happened is the ordinary next proof step. BPC-157, the peptide with the loudest following, was discovered more than three decades ago and no controlled human trial of it has ever been published; a 2015 trial in Tijuana was never released. Independent testing of samples ordered online found serious anomalies of purity, dosage or sterility in about ten per cent, one vial carrying less than forty-two per cent of its advertised dose. The scientist who found humanin puts it plainly: the history of shortcuts is not a happy one.

Read the full story at newyorker.com ↗

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