Sequence & Signal is a reader-supported publication about peptide biochemistry, the clinical trial literature, and the regulations that govern both. We explain how evidence is built, what agency documents actually say, and where the record runs out. We are not a store, a clinic, a forum, or a sourcing guide. Nothing here tells you what to take.
Three pieces we point new readers to first.
A Toronto laboratory produced a working extract in 1922, and the century that followed turned a promising molecule into a manufacturable one. The regulatory lessons came from the manufacturing, not the discovery.
A purity figure answers one question and stays silent on several others. Here is what each section of a COA is actually testing, and what a document cannot establish no matter how official it looks.
The outcome trials are large, long, and specific about what they tested. Reading them well means separating the endpoints that were measured from the conclusions that were later attached to them.
How a trial is designed, what randomisation and blinding buy you, why a p-value is not a verdict, and how to tell a primary endpoint from a secondary one that got a press release.
Approval pathways, compounding law, bulk substance lists, import rules, and enforcement letters — read as documents, with their dates, authors, and limits.
What chromatography, mass spectrometry, and sterility testing each measure; how pharmacopeial standards are written; and why identity, purity, and safety are three separate questions.
Insulin, oxytocin, the synthesis era, recombinant manufacturing. The long record of how a molecule becomes a medicine, and how often that took decades.
Stated plainly, so nobody has to guess.
The mistake I see most often isn't believing a bad study. It's believing a good study answered a question it never asked.
A short annotated list of what published this week in peptide science and regulation, with a sentence on why each item is worth your time — or why it isn't. No products, no protocols, no promotions, ever.
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