Health Canada recently warned Canadians not to buy or inject unauthorized peptide drugs sold online, naming products that include BPC-157, CJC-1295, ipamorelin, TB-500 and retatrutide.

The advisory notes these products are being marketed online and on social media for anti-aging, weight loss, injury recovery, sleep, mental focus and general “wellness,” and that Health Canada has already seized several of them.

Peptides, short chains of amino acids (the building blocks of protein), are no longer marketed only to bodybuilders and elite athletes.

A scroll on Instagram and TikTok quickly reveals a broader wellness market in which influencers, including medical doctors, naturopaths and personal trainers, pitch compounds such as BPC-157 and TB-500. The hook? These self-injected compounds are recovery shortcuts, reduce wrinkles, “melt” belly fat and are “anti-aging” with strong and incredible effects.

The problem? Few, if any, of these substances have been tested in human trials.

As a case example, body protective compound 157 (BPC-157) is scientifically interesting. Reviews published in 2025 describe a body of research dominated by animal and cell studies, with signals suggesting effects on angiogenesis (the growth of blood vessels), growth-factor signalling (mainly growth hormone) and musculoskeletal healing.

In one systematic review, 544 papers were screened, 36 met the inclusion criteria, and 35 of those were in rodents or cells; only one involved humans in a musculoskeletal context.

Plausible hypotheses

That is the tension at the heart of the current peptide boom: plausible biology can generate excitement long before it generates reliable clinical evidence. Caution is warranted because animal findings do not reliably map onto what happens in people. Molecular pathway diagrams and rodent healing results are useful for generating scientific hypotheses, but they aren’t evidence that a product improves outcomes in human patients.

Most potential products tested in rodents do not make it to market. The “translational squeeze” — the number of products that begin rodent trials compared to the number that successfully progress from rodent trials to human trials, and from human trials to regulatory approval — is estimated to be greater than 20 to one.

Published human evidence for BPC-157 remains trivial. A retrospective knee-pain report included 16 patients; an interstitial cystitis pilot trial enrolled 12 women; and a recent intravenous safety pilot involved just two healthy adults.

These studies are too small and poorly controlled to establish whether the peptide outperforms natural recovery, the placebo effect or conventional rehabilitation. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled hamstring-strain trial has now been registered, which is exactly the kind of study still missing from the evidence and efficacy base.

Placebo effect and regression to mean

The social power of peptide testimonials is easy to understand. Pain, soreness and recovery are subjective and highly variable outcomes.

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health notes that randomized, placebo-controlled trials are the gold standard because they help determine whether apparent improvement is due to the treatment or to chance. Harvard Health puts the related point bluntly: placebo effects can ease symptoms like pain, fatigue and nausea, but they do not shrink tumours or lower cholesterol.

Symptoms that are severe when people first seek help often improve by the time they are next measured, simply because of natural fluctuation, a phenomenon known as regression to the mean. So when someone injects BPC-157 and feels better two weeks later, several explanations compete: time, rehabilitation, expectation (the person has just spent money on a peptide and perhaps publicly committed to trying it), and regression to the mean. A testimonial saying “it worked,” can generate a hypothesis; it cannot settle causation.

For these reasons, regulatory warnings deserve more attention than influencer enthusiasm. Health Canada states that unauthorized injectable peptides are illegal in Canada, have not been assessed for safety, efficacy or quality, and may contain too much, too little or none of the claimed ingredient.

Notably, labels such as “For Research Use Only, Not for Human Consumption” do not make these products legal for human use.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classified BPC-157 as Category 2 for compounding due to adverse immune system reactions, peptide-related impurities and insufficient safety information to determine whether it would cause harm when administered to humans.

Purity certificates and conspiracy theories

A common rejoinder from people buying peptides online is that third-party certificates of analysis show the powder they receive is pure and free of contaminants. That reassurance does not survive scrutiny.

The “third-party” labs that produce these reports are often the vendors themselves and offer assurances of 98 per cent purity, which might seem impressive but would not meet any reasonable drug standards. And what exactly is the other two per cent? The consumer is asked to take the claims of purity as proof, while the peptide-related impurities that concern regulators remain invisible to the end user.

There is a deeper irony embedded in this practice: if buyers believed these products were safe, properly characterized and manufactured to the standards expected of pharmaceutical-grade products, they would not need to commission independent purity tests. The reliance on outside certificates of analysis is itself an admission that the normal guardrails of identity, potency, sterility and quality control are absent.

The conspiracy theory is that useful peptides are ignored by pharma companies because peptide drugs cannot be patented and become real medicines. The facts do not support that.

Semaglutide (used in GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy) is a peptide drug, and tesamorelin is an FDA-approved synthetic growth hormone-releasing factor analogue. Peptide therapeutics are not an exotic category that mainstream drug development cannot handle.

What makes BPC-157 different is not that peptide medicine is impossible. But it’s been more than three decades since researchers began studying BPC-157, and public evidence remains dominated by animal- and cell-based papers and small human pilot studies. Journalistic investigation has also noted that much of the BPC-157 literature traces back to a single Croatian research group, another reason to be careful about mistaking repetition for independent confirmation.

Safety concerns

Jurisdictional and approval rules vary across regulators, but a global scan reveals that only a scant few peptides in BPC-157’s broader therapeutic class have achieved any clinically approved use.

A recent FDA 503A update in the U.S. should not be mistaken for a change in that picture. The FDA’s current safety page continues to cite concerns about immunogenicity, peptide impurities and limited safety data, and the agency has stated that a substance may still pose significant safety risks.

BPC-157 or other peptides may yet prove useful for a specific condition, at a specific dose and route of administration. The right response is not to dismiss that possibility, but to insist on the blinded, placebo-controlled human trials that could actually settle the question.

Until then, buying vials of dry powder, reconstituting it in sterile water, and injecting the cocktail with online-purchased needles will not provide proof of anything. It is high-risk, uncontrolled human self-experimentation.

Stuart Phillips owns shares in Exerkine. He receives funding from Nestle, Optimum Nutrition, Danone, and Nutricia. He is affiliated with WndrHlth, Liquid IV, and Myomar.

Canada’s National Research Council boldly advertises itself as “advancing mission-driven science and innovation” — to strengthen national security, economic resilience and global competitiveness.

This ambition is difficult to reconcile with a national research system that has, for years, placed too little value on the basic, exploratory, investigator-led science that makes those outcomes possible.

In 2017, Canada’s Fundamental Science Review found that federal funding had shifted too far toward priority-driven and partnership-oriented research. In 2023, the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System made a similar point: mission-driven research depends on the strength of the broader research ecosystem, including curiosity-driven work.

Recent federal investments in research infrastructure, including more than $552 million through the Canada Foundation for Innovation, are important. They help universities, hospitals and research institutions acquire laboratories, equipment and facilities to conduct world-class research.

However, a healthy research ecosystem also needs stable and sustained operating support for investigator-led work. This includes the early, uncertain studies that identify tomorrow’s neglected problems before they become today’s policy priorities.

A nation’s ‘scientific capital’

Health research shows why this distinction matters. We celebrate new treatment advances such as CAR T-cell therapy, which genetically engineers a patient’s immune cells to attack cancer. We welcome CRISPR-based therapies such as Casgevy, a gene-edited cell therapy for sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia.

But these advances did not appear fully formed. They were built through years of work in molecular biology, immunology, genetics, chemistry, engineering and clinical science, much of it conducted before anyone could promise a product, a company or a clinical payoff.

That foundation is fragile when it is treated as optional. As American science adviser Vannevar Bush said back in 1945, basic research is the source of a nation’s “scientific capital.” The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) continues to make this case clearly today: public support is essential for research and innovation.

A healthy Canadian research ecosystem cannot survive on the final stages of innovation alone. Of course, it needs applied research, commercialization and measurable impact. But it also requires the earlier, “high-risk” discovery work that expands the horizon of what is possible.

Special calls are not enough

Endometriosis makes the problem concrete: it affects many people in Canada, is associated with pain, infertility and reduced quality of life. Canadian research has reported an average diagnostic delay of 5.4 years.

In fields like this, upstream science is not a luxury. Before better diagnostics and treatments can exist, researchers have to ask basic questions about inflammation, pain, immune function, hormones, nerves, genetics, imaging and disease progression.

As researchers working in reproductive health, we have seen how targeted federal grant calls can elevate under-researched conditions. The National Women’s Health Research Initiative, for example, was designed to address high-priority areas of women’s health and improve care for women, girls and gender-diverse people.

This kind of targeted funding matters. It can create momentum and build networks. But it cannot carry a research system on its own. Targeted calls are often time-limited, theme-specific and shaped by priorities that are already visible enough to attract policy attention.

The case of mRNA vaccines

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines looked to many people like a scientific miracle delivered at unprecedented speed. But that apparent speed was misleading. The vaccines did not emerge from nowhere.

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Their work helped solve a central problem: how to make mRNA useful as a medical tool without having the body immediately recognize and destroy it as a threat.

Even that breakthrough rested on a much wider scientific history, involving around 50 years of public and private research. Scientists had to understand how mRNA carries genetic instructions, how cells translate those instructions into proteins, how immune systems detect foreign RNA and how fragile mRNA could be delivered safely into cells. None of that work was a vaccine when it began. Yet without it, the vaccine could not have arrived when it was needed.

This is why short-term thinking in science policy is so risky. If research is valued only when it can explain its payoff in advance, systems will gradually favour projects that are safer, narrower and more immediately tangible. That may produce useful results in the short term, but it weakens the broader discovery pipeline over time.

Reliance on other nations

There is a strong economic case for paying attention. A 2024 study of 15 OECD countries found that public investment in research and development had positive and persistent effects on GDP and also stimulated business research and development investment.

Public support for long-term research is not separate from economic strategy. It is part of how countries build it. But the deeper issue is not only economic. It’s whether Canada wants to remain a producer of knowledge or become increasingly dependent on knowledge produced elsewhere.

A country that under-invests in basic research does not stop benefiting from science. It becomes more reliant on other systems to take the early risks, generate the foundational knowledge and shape the next generation of medical, technological and industrial advances. Canada’s Fundamental Science Review warned that continued imbalance in funding would leave the country increasingly dependent on discoveries and ideas generated abroad.

This impacts our health, climate science, energy and emerging technologies. It’s important in terms of how well Canada can respond to future crises. And it matters whether neglected areas of health and science ever receive the depth of inquiry required to produce real change.

Canada must protect upstream research

Canada should not have to choose between useful and ambitious science. These are not opposing goals. They are different points along the same continuum. Today’s basic research becomes tomorrow’s applied science. Today’s obscure mechanism becomes tomorrow’s therapy.

Today’s difficult question may become tomorrow’s platform technology. But only if someone is allowed to ask it.

Canada needs targeted programs. It needs research infrastructure. It needs commercialization possibilities that help discoveries reach patients, communities and markets. It needs sustained investment in investigator-led research.

That means protecting operating grants from erosion, funding trainees and early-career researchers, supporting high-risk work in neglected fields and evaluating scientific value by more than immediate commercial readiness.

This is not indulgence. It is foresight.

Shay M. Freger receives funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and Health Canada. He writes and conducts research on endometriosis, health equity, and health systems reform. The views expressed are his own.

Mathew Leonardi works for McMaster University (Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology), Hamilton Health Sciences, and SUGO - Specialized Ultrasound in Gynecology and Obstetrics. He receives funding from CanSAGE, CIHR, Hamilton Health Sciences, Health Canada, SOPHIE, MITACS, and Medical Research Future Fund.