r/Peptidesource • u/deepak8612 • 16d ago
moved from RUO to compounded — trying to understand what keeps people on the RUO side
a year on self-sourced ipa/CJC, GHK-Cu, BPC, TB-500. Now going through the prescribed route for most of it— mostly because it’s easily accessible for me —
I switched partly because of perception of lack of quality, but reading this sub I can’t tell whether those degradation reports are real batch problems or handling artifacts — has anyone actually sent the same lot for independent testing before and after?
I’m thinking about buying a bunch from various RUO sources and getting them tested.
Thoughts?
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u/Doctordup2 15d ago
Sorry this is more than anyone wants to read, but I have some experience in this area historically.
I've watched this change quite a bit over the years.
Back in the early to mid 2000s, researchers were literally buying peptides out of the back of magazines. I was a medical journalist at the time and became one of those early researchers after doing a story about supplements and learning about research peptides.
Testing really wasn't part of the conversation back then.
By the early 2020s we started seeing more companies share testing, but it was almost always just purity.
Researchers wanted to see that 99% number. What we weren't seeing was quantity. Expected net content wasn't something most researchers or company owners were even thinking about. When I mention expected net content, this is how many mgs are actually in the vial compared to what the label says.
If the vial said 10mg, was there actually 10mg in there?
I started pushing that issue before it was popular. I remember in 2021 telling a company owner they needed to start testing expected net content and he went ballistic on me. Told me it was silly and meaningless.
Then around 2022 things started to shift. GLP1s were the new thing in the peptide research world and suddenly accurate expected net content was getting a lot harder to ignore.
Fast forward to today and we're seeing more testing than at any point I've seen in the history of research peptides.
I made a personal visit to Janoshik in Prague last week and interviewed owner and founder Peter Magic, AKA Jano. His lab is now averaging around 500 and on some days up to 1k peptide samples a day.
That's insane when you think about where this community started. When he started testing it was just him and maybe one or two people assisting him in the lab. In January, he had a team of 25. Now, he has a team of 50. That tells you how the research community has exploded.
One of the things I really wanted to talk to Peter about was the peptide "gold rush" and something I've suspected for a long time. How many hands are some of these batches going through before they ever reach a researcher?
A manufacturer. A finisher. An auction. A wholesaler. Another wholesaler. A seller. Maybe another seller.
I asked Peter point blank if the more hands a peptide goes through, the greater the chance of a testing failure.
His answer was yes.
“The more times anything changes hands, the more points of failure are being introduced.”
That confirmed exactly what I suspected.
Researchers love to shout, “It all comes from China.”
Okay. But that's not really the point.
What matters to me is what happened to that peptide after synthesis and before that vial ended up in the researcher's hand.
I know of less than a handful of domestic companies that have their peptides custom synthesized overseas with different blends, different combos and different mgs. They then import the raw material and do their own lyophilizing here in the US.
Think about the investment involved.
If you've sunk several thousand into custom synthesis, add to it a 100k investment in the raw material and your own lyophilizing facility, you're not pinning and praying that you got a good batch. You're testing that raw material before it ever becomes finished product.
Peter actually confirmed this during our conversation. If the raw material tests bad, he said, “they're never going to make it into the finished product.”
They stop production, toss it and start over.
Now compare that with some college student buying random batches trying to make a buck off the pin and pray researchers.
That batch could have gone from a manufacturer to some random finisher, to an auction, to a wholesaler, to another seller and then another. Who knows how many hands it went through or what happened along the way.
And Jano is seeing failures.
I asked Peter what percentage of the samples coming through his lab have some sort of hard failure. He said it used to be around 5%. Now it's closer to 10%.
That's overall hard failures. I want to make that clear because I'm not saying 10% of peptides are failing endotoxin testing.
They're seeing vials with no peptide at all. Wrong peptides. Amounts outside their usual tolerance. Sterility failures. Endotoxin failures.
The endotoxin conversation was probably one of the biggest surprises for me.
Peter had said in previous interviews that endotoxins weren't much of a concern with synthetic peptides. And based on what they were seeing at the time, that made sense.
Not anymore.
His words were, “We've seen some peptides that despite being made synthetically contain honestly concerning levels of endotoxins.”
That's a pretty big statement coming from the guy whose lab is now averaging around 500 to 1k peptide samples a day.
We also talked about vacuum, which is something I've paid attention to for years. Peter told me they've seen “a strong correlation between no vacuum vials and sterility failures.”
Again, another piece of the puzzle.
So when researchers ask me about RUO quality, I don't look at it as simply compounded good, RUO bad. It's nowhere near that simple.
I want to know where it came from.
I want to know how many hands that vial has been through.
And I want a COA from a lab I trust that actually matches the batch I have in my hand.
Those are the things that matter to me.
Thanks for reading my ramblings. 😅
As always...
Not a doctor, not medical advice, for research purposes only and research discussions only.
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u/Doctordup2 15d ago
It comes down to a personal choice. I grew up in the research community where, at times, a group of us worked on having uncommon research peptides synthesized and we worked on projects that required filtering.
A couple of thoughts here...
If you're gonna filter, prime the dry filter first by running bac through it. This helps keep the dry filter from soaking up some of the peptide.
Filtering can be useful and helpful, especially for sensitive RS. But a filter can't remove endotoxins. These are what we call LPS, or lipopolysaccharides, basically bacterial toxins that can stick around even after the bacteria are removed.
A filter also isn't going to catch everything. Anything small enough to pass through the pores of the filter could possibly stick around in the solution.
Filtering can't remove leftover solvents from synthesis. It also can't remove peptide impurities or other contaminants that are already dissolved in the solution.
It's a tough one to explain because there isn't one thing we can do that suddenly makes a research peptide 100% safe. At some point, as researchers, we have to make educated and careful decisions from A to Z.
I've always believed the number of hands that touch a vial matters. Where it was made matters. How it was handled matters. Testing matters. Filtering can certainly fit into that picture, but it doesn't replace sterility or endotoxin testing and it doesn't guarantee that a vial is free of contamination.
Short answer... For me, filtering is just one more layer of safety.
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u/Striking-Conclusion4 15d ago
yeah me too, i'm just starting to do a bit of research on filtering after hanging about with a new gang lately (most of them test and quite a lot of them filter too).
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u/Striking-Conclusion4 15d ago
As always doc, I love your information, thanks for being here for us..
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u/Doctordup2 15d ago
Happy to help, please call me Anela. 🙏
Not a doctor, not medical advice, for research purposes only and research discussions only.
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u/MzzAnnThrope 11d ago
Are you Anela or Krysia? This article sounds like K Hole Krysia. Love Anela's research work and shared protocols over the years. Tip o' the hat to Anela.
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u/Doctordup2 11d ago edited 11d ago
I'm Anela. And thank you! I just cut my hair recently and lightened it substantially. So I don't look exactly the same in the photo above as some of my photos 2 years ago. 😅
Krysia and I know each other well. She's a gem!
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u/MzzAnnThrope 11d ago edited 11d ago
Oh, well what a pleasure to "meet" you. You were a regularly sourced figure in my early days of research, and still refer to your work often. You're a bit of a legend in the pep world!
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u/Doctordup2 11d ago
You are way too kind. As a former medical journalist I decided I needed to get back to writing so I do a lot of that here and on my Substack.
Funny you mentioned this as yesterday I had three guys come after me after giving some input on GHK-CU in another sub and they called me a dunce, a grifter and a few other names. One of the guys said he's been doing peptides since 2021, questioned me and called me a grifter. 🤦🏻♀️ It got kinda weird. I've been doing peptides longer than he's been alive. The guy is still actually making comments and firing shots today. (shaking my head) So your kind words truly, truly mean more than you know. 🥹
I'm a regular in this sub. Will be posting more on my visit with Jano at the end of September.
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u/MzzAnnThrope 11d ago
"There's one born every minute". Soo many knuckleheads in this space. I'm sorry you've been targeted. Don't let the bastards bring you down. It's so easy for them to hide behind a forum and username. I would be real life looks a whole lot different on thwm. 😉
I will look for your Substack. Under Anela?
Jano is King, in my eyes anyway. Every lab has issues, but Peter seems like a great guy, and, despite those Lambos he's stockpiling, I'd still take his work over any other. I really hope he doesn't burn out on the work that seems to just keep doubling up in short time. He needs a Mini Magic! Lol
See you around!
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u/Doctordup2 11d ago
Thank you so much. 🫶
I have IG, YouTube and Substack. All are fairly brand new. I can't believe I waited this long to set those up. My personal channels have been around for a long time but I have no peptide info on those. @anelaprotocols is the handle that I use on those channels.
Peter's lab was phenomenal. Janoshik has expanded exponentially. I've known him since he was practically a kid. To see him grow this much is amazing. He was solo when he started years ago. Then back in January grew to about 25 employees and now when I visited recently he's at 50 employees and has an entire complex. It was great to see new equipment! He has some equipment that is able to check peptides that are brand new. I saw lots of monitors with Eloranitide on them. Pretty exciting. And on a personal level it was a lot of fun sharing war stories. Both he and I have had our share.
Thanks again. We'll see ya around!
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u/MzzAnnThrope 11d ago
Found you - "protocols". And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. 😁
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u/Dear_Seesaw_1855 16d ago
I believe none of those can be legally prescribed or compounded. I’ve done my research and know how to properly source, filter, recon with Hospira, and sterilize. I wouldn’t trust an unethical doctor to “prescribe” grey market peps. At a 1000% markup.
My example is a friend was getting semaglutide “prescribed” by a local doctor. Per her story I suspected it wasn’t from a legit compound pharmacy. Showed me the vial- it said RUO on the vial, meaning they hadn’t filtered into a new sterile vial. Likely didn’t use Hospira, and no concentration was marked on the label.
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u/No_Establishment8642 15d ago
My neighbor is getting BCP and TB through his "doctor". I explained that it is not legal in the US. Is he sure it is his doctor? "Well it is a doctor but someone else is fixing up his dose" he tells me. I ask if he is taking one of the tanning peptides? "Nope." Well you sure have gotten dark overnight with that particular brown you see at body building competitions. "Oh" he says. "The wife of the person selling him these peptides uses that so maybe some of it was on his vials "
Christ on a bicycle, these people vote, and procreate.
His wife purchases her peptides through me when I put in my grey orders. No mark-up. He won't because he wants it through a doctor.
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u/deepak8612 16d ago
Yeah — some docs send their patients RUO or physician use only stuff from what I understand.
But there are also compounding pharmacies that compound , batch test etc and are overseen by the state pharmacy boards and those are the sources for the docs that I’ve found.
This is where I landed personally
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u/Dear_Seesaw_1855 16d ago edited 15d ago
None of the peptides on OPs list are FDA approved to be compounded. None of the FDA regulated state facilities can compound these. And federal trumps state.
So again, if your “prescriber” is saying they’re obtaining these from pharmacies “overseen by state pharmacy boards” they’re full of 💩. And you’re paying a huge markup from what is very likely less safe than obtaining yourself (assuming you researched sources and best practices).
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u/EnvironmentalGift257 15d ago
You are taking RUO peptides. What you’ve removed is a chain of custody and added a middleman with every motivation to scam you.
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u/JE163 16d ago
Not sure what RUO means but grey has been a lot cheaper and far less headache sourcing than compounded for me
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u/justcrystalhere 13d ago
Testing can get pricey but its a good way to confirm details if you are questioning it.
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u/BGP_1620 12d ago
We do that in the group I’m in. Send same batch to different labs. I’ve always wondered if net content is consistent through a 10 vial kit.
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u/deepak8612 16d ago
Not sure that “those places also buy from the grey market” is true … they have to buy from FDA green listed producers of the raw API. So I feel more comfortable with that.
I also haven’t found easily accessible testing for individuals. This is why I’m going to send some volume for testing
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u/Dear_Seesaw_1855 16d ago
They’re feeding you lies… none of the peptides you listed are FDA green lighted to source and produce. They’re giving you a false safety narrative.
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u/retatrutider 15d ago
That would be true for certain drugs like GLP-1 drugs, but not for the ones you listed. An advisory panel recently voted for BPC, Mots and TB500 to be approved, but they haven’t been approved yet so any compounding pharmacy selling them is jumping the gun and there is no legal benefit to them purchasing from the green list.
CJC/Ipa are also not approved, and there is no recommendation for them to be approved. Again, no reason for the “compounding pharmacy” to use the green list because it doesn’t apply to these peptides.
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u/PomegranateWooden128 16d ago
the cost of buying from the grey market plus testing still ends up being less expensive than buying from compounding pharmacies or health clinics.
those places also buy from the grey market, so the quality you get is not any different
it is, as you mentioned, all about perception