Peptide basics

BPC-157 vs TB-500: two of the most-read peptides, three registered trials between them

This page reports how much registered, published and regulatory record exists for each compound. It is not a verdict on repair, recovery, injury or anything else these compounds are discussed for, and the absence of evidence reported below is not evidence that either compound is ineffective.

What this comparison measures

These two compounds are routinely named together, sold together and searched together. What follows compares what is on the public record for each: registered studies, the phase those studies reached, regulatory status, indexed publications, and readership.¹²⁷⁸

Registered human trials

PepRack's snapshot of 1 August 2026 records two registered studies naming BPC-157 as an intervention, from two loose registry matches, and one registered study naming TB-500, from one loose match. In both cases every match survived verification, so the raw and verified counts agree.¹²

BPC-157's two entries are NCT02637284, a phase-1 safety and pharmacokinetics trial registered in 2015 whose intervention is listed as Bepecin with BPC-157 among its other names, and NCT07437547, a phase-2 trial in acute hamstring strain registered in 2026 and listed as recruiting. The 2015 record's status is listed as unknown, meaning the sponsor has not updated it within the registry's expected window.³⁴

TB-500's single entry is NCT07487363, registered in 2026 as a phase-1/phase-2 study of cardiovascular biomarkers in stable atherosclerotic disease, and listed as recruiting. Because it carries both phase labels, it contributes to both phase tallies in the snapshot while remaining one study.⁵²

Furthest phase reached

The highest registered phase for both compounds is phase 2. For BPC-157 that label belongs to the 2026 hamstring trial; for TB-500 it belongs to the 2026 cardiovascular-biomarker study, which is registered across phases 1 and 2 together.¹²⁴⁵

Phase 2 is where a compound is first examined for activity in a patient population at a scale that is still small. Reaching it is not a milestone of demonstrated benefit; it is a stage of investigation, and in both these cases the stage has been entered rather than completed.⁴⁵

Regulatory status

Neither compound has an FDA-approved product in the snapshot. Both appear on the FDA's published page covering bulk drug substances nominated for use in compounding, in the table of nominations that were subsequently withdrawn by their nominators.⁶

The wording FDA uses for each is worth reading precisely, because it is often reported as a safety finding and it is not one. For BPC-157 the agency writes that it has identified no, or only limited, safety-related information for the proposed routes and therefore lacks sufficient information to know whether the drug would cause harm in humans. For the thymosin beta-4 fragment it lists no identified human exposure data at all.⁶

• Neither compound holds an approved application in the record checked here.
• Both appear in FDA's withdrawn-nomination table for compounding bulk substances.
• FDA's stated position on both is an absence of information, not a determination of harm.⁶

Publication trend, 2017 to 2026

A PubMed title/abstract search across 2017 to 2026 returns 117 records for BPC-157 and 7 for TB-500. Both series are small enough that single years move them noticeably: BPC-157 ranges between 5 and 20 records a year, and TB-500 records zero in six of the ten years.⁷⁸

A recent review of BPC-157 as an investigational therapeutic describes the development barriers rather than a body of clinical results, which is consistent with a literature made up mostly of preclinical work. A 2026 review of peptide therapies in musculoskeletal injury covers both approved and unapproved substances and is the most direct published treatment of this pair together.¹⁰¹¹

TB-500 is not the same record as thymosin beta-4

This distinction changes the numbers, so it belongs in the comparison rather than in a footnote. FDA's list names the substance as thymosin beta-4, fragment (LKKTETQ), also known as TB-500 — a short fragment, not the full-length 43-residue peptide.⁶

Full-length thymosin beta-4 has its own human record, including a randomised, placebo-controlled study in healthy volunteers published in 2010. That study is evidence about thymosin beta-4. Counting it as TB-500 evidence attributes another molecule's trial history to the fragment sold under that name.⁹⁶

The readership figure inherits the same ambiguity. PepRack maps TB-500 to the English Wikipedia article on thymosin beta-4, because no separate article exists, so its 2,321 average monthly readers are readers of the parent-peptide page.²¹²

BPC-157 is among the most-read compounds on this site and among the least-tested in humans — the widest attention-to-evidence gap in the repair category.

TB-500's entire registered record is a single 2026 study, and its indexed literature runs to single figures across a decade.

Attention against evidence

Between February and June 2026, the BPC-157 Wikipedia article averaged 31,331 views a month and peaked at 35,706. The thymosin beta-4 article, which stands in for TB-500, averaged 2,321 between February and July 2026 and peaked at 3,331.¹²¹²

Set against two registered trials and one, that readership is the clearest example on this site of interest running far ahead of the record. It is worth being exact about what that means: heavy readership is a fact about search behaviour and nothing else. It carries no information about whether a compound works.¹²

Common questions