The Billion-Dollar Peptides Gold Rush

**Carol Massar** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:07)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:14)
This is about the million dollar peptides gold rush. And as I was reading it, I thought about a friend of mine who recently shared that he is the father of a teenage boy or two. He found some peptides in the refrigerator.
In the basement.

**Amanda Mull** (0:31)
Well, safe storage at least.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:32)
Safe storage, but not necessarily safe injection.

**Amanda Mull** (0:37)
Yes.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:37)
Or safe part of the world or place that these came from. And that's really at the heart of the story.
First of all, if people aren't familiar with peptides, Madison, start us out, what are they?

**Madison Muller** (0:52)
Ooh, that's a good question. One of the things is that most people actually don't know what they are, they don't know how to explain them, even if they think that they do. And a lot of people are injecting these things, don't really know what they are. But peptides are essentially, I mean, if you think about it, insulin is a peptide, GLP-1s are a peptide. There are a lot of legal drugs out there that are peptides, common drugs.
But when we're talking about peptides, so putting it in this sort of context, we're talking about black market peptides, the ones that are not approved drugs that don't really have the rigorous safety mapping.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:27)
We're the ones in the fridge of the teenage boy.

**Carol Massar** (1:29)
Yes. Okay, this doesn't sound good. What exactly are black market peptides, Amanda?

**Amanda Mull** (1:37)
Well, they start off as little glass vials of powder that are imported from overseas, usually from Chinese manufacturers, which it should be noted also produce a lot of the active pharmaceutical ingredients and perfectly legal, perfectly safe drugs. They're imported from overseas, little glass vials of powder, they're reconstituted with a special type of sterile liquid, so that they can then be drawn up into a syringe and injected.
So once they're reconstituted, they have to be kept cold in order to be kept safe. So that's why they're in the fridge.

**Carol Massar** (2:11)
Why do people want them?

**Amanda Mull** (2:13)
A whole host of reasons.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:14)
For everything.

**Madison Muller** (2:15)
For everything, basically.

**Carol Massar** (2:17)
To sleep, to tan, to-

**Tim Stenovec** (2:19)
One thing that may inform the question is Carol's not on Instagram.

**Carol Massar** (2:22)
No, no.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:24)
Maybe she doesn't see the same things I do.

**Carol Massar** (2:25)
Well, tell us about, like, what is going on?

**Amanda Mull** (2:28)
Well, people are looking for a magic pill. Like, as always, from the beginning of humanity, people have been looking for substances that can solve various problems. And people are hopeful because GLP-1 drugs are so effective at helping people lose weight.

**Carol Massar** (2:48)
And work.

**Amanda Mull** (2:48)
They work. They work. They're safe, they're effective, they've been used in large patient populations. So once those got popular, people started looking for other peptides to do other things in their bodies.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:00)
Well, Madison, you cover mostly the regulated pharmaceutical industry as a health care reporter. Do the black market peptides work? Does the stuff that is sold as part of, I don't know, a filler treatment at a med spa in Brooklyn, or the stuff that a celebrity talks about as a secret to all people?

**Carol Massar** (3:20)
It seems to know a lot about this.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:21)
It's all in the script.

**Carol Massar** (3:22)
I know, I know. Just kidding.

**Madison Muller** (3:23)
Just kidding.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:26)
Do they work? Is there the evidence to back it up?

**Madison Muller** (3:29)
That is the key question. Because the thing is, if you ask someone, and we ask many people in the course of reporting this story, several of whom are in the story, they do work. They're life changing. But the evidence and the safety data and the effectiveness data is not there to back it up. So it's hard to know and it's hard to tease out. I mean, one of the people that we talk to in the story is on terzepotide, which is the active ingredient in Lilly's drugs. They're also on multiple other things. And so it's hard to know whether the effects that they're experiencing, the anti-inflammatory effects, the weight loss, all of the things are because of Lilly's drug, which we know does work, or the other things that they're on.
And sometimes when people start taking these peptides, they might also start working out more, or start eating healthier, doing other things. And it's just a bit hard to know what's actually happening.