Compound Spotlight Oxytocin occupies a strange position in science: its classical endocrine functions are among the best-established facts in physiology, while the popular research about it — the “trust hormone” and “love hormone” literature — has become one of the most-cited cautionary tales in the replication crisis. Both things are true at once, and separating
Compound Spotlight KPV is three amino acids long. That makes it one of the smallest molecules in this catalog, and the reason it is interesting: it appears to retain the anti-inflammatory activity of a much larger hormone while discarding the rest of what that hormone does. Quick summary A tripeptide — Lysine-Proline-Valine — corresponding to
Compound Spotlight IGF-1 LR3 is one of the few compounds in this catalog with a genuine, uncontroversial, mainstream research application: it is a standard reagent in mammalian cell culture, used in laboratories and biomanufacturing worldwide. Understanding why it exists in that context explains both what it does and why its design is what it is.
Compound Spotlight Epithalon is a four-amino-acid peptide with an outsized reputation in longevity circles, built on a research program that is both substantial and unusually concentrated in a single institution. Evaluating it honestly means separating what the underlying biology plausibly supports from what the replication record can actually carry. Quick summary A synthetic tetrapeptide, Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly,
Compound Spotlight Glutathione is the most abundant antioxidant inside human cells, present at millimolar concentrations — higher than almost any other small molecule in the cytoplasm. It is also the compound in this catalog with the largest gap between how much is known about it and how well understood the practical question of supplementation actually
Compound Spotlight DSIP is one of the oldest compounds in this catalog and, nearly fifty years after its discovery, one of the least resolved. It has a name that states a function it has never reliably demonstrated, and no confirmed receptor. That combination makes it a genuinely interesting case study in how peptide research can
