Peptides are hot right now.

Not necessarily legal, but hot.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids.

GLP1 weight loss drugs are peptides, insulin is one-two, and there are thousands of others.

Now people are seeking out peptides in the hope of better muscles, better skin, better memory, better everything.

One of the interested, RFK Jr., who runs the Department of Health and Human Services.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of peptides. I've used them myself. That's him speaking in February on Joe Rogan's

podcast. Many of the peptides people want to try are available for research use only. But Kennedy's FDA might change this.

In July, the agency could decide to make about a dozen peptides more accessible by allowing

pharmacies to compound and distribute them. I talked about this with Zara Stone of the San Francisco

standard. So there's a lot of excitement about this July hearing that is coming up. And this hearing

is ostensibly for the FDA to reassess a bunch of the formerly forbidden peptides and possibly

put them on the OK to compound list. They're going to have scientists and researchers and academics.

And the idea is that they will go deep into all the data and the

studies and come out with the new guidelines as to whether these are okay for humans.

And that could make it legal for pharmacies to compound and sell these peptides and for

doctors to prescribe them? I mean, that is what people are hoping for. No one knows for certain, but a lot of people are really

banking on what that's going to happen and are willing to put money behind it now, just

and able to get ahead of when it potentially happens. Yeah, so you've been reporting on this.

There are some startups that are poised to work in this space as soon as the FDA

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