00:00A growing trend in Silicon Valley is blending tech culture, biohacking and wellness as unregulated peptides move from the fringes more into the mainstream.
00:09Jasmine Sun joins us now for a one on one interview.
00:11She is an independent journalist covering Silicon Valley directly on her sub stack to audiences everywhere.
00:17Jasmine, thanks for being here. Really nice to have you.
00:19Thanks so much for having me. Excited to talk.
00:22So the rise of some of these kind of so-called gray market peptides, a fascinating conversation.
00:27But for for any of our viewers who are probably a bit more familiar with GLP ones right now, what exactly are peptides and how are they exploding right now across Silicon Valley?
00:41Yeah, so this is a fascinating biohacking trend I've been watching from the tech world from San Francisco.
00:47Most people, as you said, do know peptides as the P in GLP one.
00:51So GLP ones like a Zempic are a subcategory or a type of peptide, but actually peptides are any short chain of amino acids from insulin to some of these more experimental ones that we'll get into.
01:03And I think what happened was that as folks started to start taking GLP ones and see some of these dramatic effects for weight loss,
01:11some of the more gutsy biohackers started wondering if GLP ones work this well, maybe there's a magic shot for everything else.
01:18And so folks started going to these Chinese drug manufacturers and wondering what other drugs that are maybe less tested or have anecdotal data can I use for my health, for my fitness?
01:29And so now people are experimenting with all sorts of gray market peptides from BPC-157 for muscle healing to epitalin for sleep.
01:38And these ones are not FDA approved, but there are some folks who have decided to start experimenting themselves.
01:43Yeah, that was my question. Where are we in terms of FDA regulations or other regulatory rules of the road for some of these products that you're discussing?
01:52Yeah, so almost none of them are FDA approved.
01:55So the GLP ones, of course, have been through clinical trials.
01:59And the most popular gray market peptide right now is retatrutide, which is a GLP-3, a next generation weight loss drug.
02:06And that one has actually passed or they are in the middle of phase three clinical trials and people expect that it will reach FDA approval in the next couple of years.
02:15But for the majority of these more experimental peptides that people are playing with, there is people don't expect that the FDA ever will approve them, to be honest.
02:25And that's because these peptides are so simple to manufacture that there's not a lot of patentability or incentive for pharma companies to invest in the trials in order to earn FDA approval.
02:37So we may be in this gray market for a very long time, though, to be clear, the current Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has sort of indicated that he personally feels positively about peptides.
02:48And we've seen a drop in the level of enforcement against unauthorized peptide sellers between the Biden and the Trump administration.
02:56Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Secretary Kennedy. Talk to me a bit more about what his support or lack of support lands for on peptides.
03:03I mean, for people who don't cover the ins and outs, what are some of the public comments that he has made and how aligned is that with sort of a lot of the sources of your news gathering around Silicon Valley?
03:13Right. I mean, it was interesting. A lot of the sources I spoke to who were experimenting with peptides, they were big fans of the Secretary Kennedy's approach to health.
03:23They were very interested in this sort of make America healthy again movement.
03:27So in fall of 2024, before the election and before Trump took office, Secretary Kennedy had written, I think, one tweet about potentially ending the Biden admin's aggressive suppression of peptides, as well as supplements and other sort of alternative wellness approaches.
03:45But to be honest, we haven't seen a ton of action from this administration to actually move peptides into more clear legal terrain.
03:53What we've rather seen is this more laissez-faire approach to enforcing the regulations that do exist, because the Biden admin FDA, for example, would take action against some unauthorized peptide sellers that were accused of marketing peptides to human users.
04:09And we have seen those warning letters sort of drop and fall. I haven't seen any on the FDA site during this at this administration.
04:17The administration is very interested also in, you know, approving GLPs and lowering the costs and negotiating prices for GLP ones, as well as they had moved the oral GLPs to the priority approval list, which is why we saw the Wagovi pill approved in December.
04:32So we definitely see some small movement around the edges. But actually, some of the folks I spoke to were a little bit disappointed that RFK has not moved more decisively in order to bring peptides into more legal terrain.
04:46Jasmine, what are among the biggest, I guess, potential health risks that experts have warned about about this general space?
04:54Yeah, I would say that the health risks fall into two main categories for gray market peptides.
05:01Part of this is the gray market nature. So just to clarify what that means, a lot of these folks getting peptides because they can't just, you know, purchase them over the counter or get them prescribed by a U.S. doctor.
05:12Oftentimes they are buying them directly from Chinese drug manufacturers under the label of research chemicals.
05:18So chemicals that are being intended to be sold to scientists and labs rather than for human use.
05:24And then it's sort of this fig leaf where everyone turns the other way and pretends not to realize that the research subjects are, in fact, humans hoping for these medical benefits.
05:33But the thing with that is that many of these factories do not meet FDA approved standards for drug manufacturing quality, the CGMP standard.
05:42And so the first category of risks is contamination risk or simply you don't know if you're getting what it says on the vial.
05:49When you import these, you know, vials of gray market peptides from across the ocean, we don't know.
05:54Has it been temperature controlled? Does it actually contain the thing that it says?
05:58What were the conditions that this drug was manufactured under?
06:01Then I would say the second category of risks that doctors have spoken about is basically the fact that we just don't have human trial evidence.
06:10So BPC-157, which is one of the more popular experimental peptides, has only ever been trialed in rats.
06:16Everything else is anecdotal.
06:18For some of the others, it's just in cell culture.
06:21So even less sort of evidence in a living being, you know.
06:25And so what that means is that even if we are seeing some anecdotal benefits of this fixed my sleep, this fixed my tennis elbow, we don't have the trials to know, does this work for people of different ages?
06:38What if you have pre-existing conditions?
06:40And when you are stacking these peptides, as many people are, taking, you know, five or six shots every day to sort of get the combined benefits, what kinds of effects might that have in the body?
06:50We don't really know.
06:53Jasmine, before we wrap up, what are still among your biggest unanswered questions in this general space?
07:00What a fascinating conversation.
07:03Yeah, I mean, it's totally crazy.
07:06It's fascinating because, you know, it shows that people across the country are taking this more risk-tolerant experimental approach.
07:16And, you know, it reveals a loss of trust in general in the FDA and in doctors that there has been such a boom in alternative wellness therapies, right?
07:25Some of the questions I have, one is just like, why aren't all the peptides coming from these Chinese manufacturers?
07:33Why isn't more drug manufacturing happening in the U.S.?
07:36And is that something that we should be worried about, is the drug supply chain?
07:41Another question I have is how much of this is reaching beyond biohacking circles.
07:45So when I talked to some of these gray market suppliers who are selling these peptides, they told me it starts with the techies because they're the ones willing to take ridiculous risks.
07:55But at this point, our median customer is like a Starbucks barista.
07:58There's marketing for peptides on TikTok and social media has exploded by 8x over the last couple of years, according to a research firm I spoke with.
08:08And so if that's the case, a lot more people from, you know, teenage boys who are on TikTok to young women hoping to lose weight are experimenting with this stuff.
08:18And because of the gray market nature, it's very hard to know exactly how many people are doing it among the broader American public.
08:25Now, that's absolutely fascinating.
08:27Jasmine Sung, terrific work.
08:28You can catch everything Jasmine is filing directly on her sub stack.
08:32Independent journalist covering clearly some of the more fascinating stories going on in and around Silicon Valley.
08:38Thanks a lot for joining us, Jasmine.
08:39Great to have you.
08:40Thanks so much for having me.
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