BPC-157 human studies: every published report and registered clinical trial

The short answer: BPC-157 has been given to people in three published pilot reports, together describing about 30 patients, and none of them had a control group. [1] No randomized controlled trial of BPC-157 has published results. A randomized, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial is now recruiting, and a few other studies are registered, but as of September 23, 2026 the human evidence is uncontrolled case series and nothing more. [6]

This page lists every published human report we could find, with its sample size and limits, and every registered trial on ClinicalTrials.gov. We will update it as results appear.

Has BPC-157 been tested in humans?

Barely. A 2025 systematic review searched PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase and screened 544 articles; of the 36 it included, 35 were preclinical and 1 was clinical. [3] A second 2025 review counted three human pilot studies in total and concluded that rigorous, large-scale trials are lacking. [1] A 2026 review of the development record added that none of the pilots used a standardized pharmaceutical preparation. [6]

Our dataset grades BPC-157 animal only, and none of the human reports below is a controlled trial. The methodology explains how grades are assigned and what would move one.

Every published BPC-157 human study

1. Knee pain, 2021. Retrospective chart review with phone follow-up. [2]

• Who: 17 patients who had BPC-157 injected into the knee for various causes of pain, 16 of whom were reached; 12 received BPC-157 alone and 4 received it with thymosin beta-4.
• Result: 11 of the 12 given BPC-157 alone reported significant improvement; 14 of 16 overall reported relief.
• Limits: no control group, no standardized pain or function scale, follow-up by recall 6 months to a year later. A systematic review read the same data as 7 of 12 patients reporting relief for more than 6 months. [3]

2. Interstitial cystitis, 2024. Single-arm pilot. [4]

• Who: 12 women aged 39 to 76 with moderate to severe bladder pain syndrome that had not responded to standard medication.
• Intervention: BPC-157 injected into the bladder wall around the inflamed area during a single cystoscopy.
• Result: 10 of 12 reported complete resolution of symptoms and 2 reported about 80% improvement on a global response questionnaire; no adverse events were reported.
• Limits: no control group, a single self-reported questionnaire as the outcome, and no follow-up beyond the report.

3. Intravenous safety, 2025. Two-person pilot. [5]

• Who: 2 adults, aged 58 and 68, both of whom had received intravenous BPC-157 before.
• Result: no measured change in heart, liver, kidney, thyroid, or glucose markers across two infusions, and no side effects reported.
• Limits: two people who had already tolerated the drug, observed for three days. It cannot establish safety for anyone else.

All three share the same lead author. Two measured benefit by patient report alone, and the third measured only blood tests over three days.

A report that is not a treatment study. A 2011 paper is sometimes listed as human BPC-157 data. It combined rat experiments with esophageal pressure measurements in patients with acute pancreatitis; only the rats received BPC-157. [7]

The inflammatory bowel disease trials that were never published

Papers from the group that discovered BPC-157 describe it, under the code PL 14736, as tested and safe in clinical trials for inflammatory bowel disease, and one review states it was tested in phase II. [8] We found no full peer-reviewed report of those trials, and a 2026 review found no completed phase II trial in the published record. [6] Unpublished trial data cannot be checked, so they do not count toward our grade. Our inflammatory bowel disease page grades BPC-157 animal only.

BPC-157 human clinical trials on ClinicalTrials.gov

We searched ClinicalTrials.gov for BPC-157 and its development codes on September 23, 2026 and found four entries:

1. Oral tablet safety and pharmacokinetics (NCT02637284). Randomized, placebo-controlled, quadruple-masked phase 1 trial of oral BPC-157 tablets in healthy volunteers, estimated 42 participants, registered in 2015 with completion expected in 2016. Status unknown; no results posted. [9]
2. Acute hamstring strain (NCT07437547). Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial in adults with an MRI-confirmed grade II hamstring strain, with 14 days of study injections on top of standardized rehab for everyone. Co-primary endpoints: time to return to unrestricted sport and MRI injury volume at day 14. Recruiting, estimated 120 participants, industry sponsored. [10]
3. Rotator cuff repair (NCT07803250). Randomized pilot of BPC-157 after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair at an academic center, with MRI tendon healing, patient-reported outcomes, range of motion, and strength as outcomes. Estimated 30 participants; not yet recruiting. The registry entry describes the control group inconsistently, once as saline placebo and once as no treatment. [11]
4. Oral gummies (NCT07752381). Single-group, unmasked study of a gummy product containing BPC-157, run by its maker, in 40 active adults over 8 weeks, measuring inflammation markers and self-reported recovery. Marked completed in 2026; no results posted. Without a control group it cannot show an effect even when it reports. [12]

The hamstring trial is the one to watch. It is the first registered BPC-157 trial to combine a placebo group, blinding, an objective imaging endpoint, and a larger planned sample than any earlier BPC-157 study.

What the human record does not show

• Efficacy. No result from a controlled comparison, for any condition, including the tendon injuries that drive most interest. The animal tendon work remains the main support, and a 2019 review said human trials are needed before clinical claims can be made. [13]
• Pharmacokinetics. No published human absorption or half-life study. The only formal data are from rats and dogs, where the elimination half-life was under 30 minutes. [14]
• Safety at scale. No systematic safety data. Reviewers of unregulated peptides also flag contamination and inaccurate content in products outside pharmacies as risks independent of the molecule. [15]
• Combinations. No trial has tested BPC-157 with TB-500 or anything else; the knee report's 4 combination patients are too few to say anything. See BPC-157 vs TB-500.

Legal status while trials run

Registered trials do not create access for anyone outside them. Outside a trial, BPC-157 is not an FDA approved drug. PCAC recommended it for the 503A bulks list in July 2026, but until FDA publishes a final rule it is not on the list and a 503A pharmacy has no federal basis to compound it from bulk. [16] [17] Follow the BPC-157 regulatory timeline, the state legal guides, and the BPC-157 cost page, which explains why there is no lawful price yet. WADA prohibits BPC-157 at all times. [18]

For how to judge the next BPC-157 paper yourself, see how to read a peptide study. For what the July vote did and did not change, see the PCAC vote explained. Related posts: BPC-157 before and after, oral BPC-157, and BPC-157 for gut health.

Until a rule is published, how to get peptides prescribed explains which peptides have a lawful route today, and our peptide therapy explainer covers how clinics market unlisted substances.