Research coverage runs from preclinical mechanism papers to AI-driven peptide discovery. Most of what shows up here lives in Nature, Cell, Science, JAMA, and the abstracts from AACR, ESCMID, AAN, and ESCMID Global.
A few threads keep recurring. Macrocyclic and bicyclic peptides keep getting better at hitting "undruggable" targets — KRAS, beta-catenin, intracellular protein–protein interactions. Antimicrobial peptides have moved from theory to clinical candidates against carbapenem-resistant organisms and biofilms. Cancer peptide vaccines (ELI-002, autogene cevumeran, EVX-01) are producing real survival data. AI design tools — protein language models, transformer architectures, de novo platforms — are starting to generate hits that humans wouldn't.
If you want the lab side without the press releases, this is the right surface. The stories below name the lab, the journal, and the result.
A review from the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, published October 4, 2026 in the Journal of Peptide Science, surveys linear and cyclic peptides that bind glypican-3, a cell-surface protein that is common in hepatocellular carcinoma but largely absent from normal adult liver. The peptides, found mainly through phage display and structure-guided design, have enabled PET, SPECT, and fluorescence imaging of liver tumors in preclinical models, and albumin-binding changes and cyclization have improved tumor-to-liver contrast and stability. The authors argue that small peptides penetrate tumors faster and clear more quickly than the antibodies used against the same target; the imaging work they review is preclinical.
The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology & Women's Health published two papers on GLP-1 drugs in women on Tuesday, September 29, 2026. A systematic review, meta-analysis, and international consensus statement led by Sarah Dib pooled seven studies covering more than 43,000 exposed women with diabetes and found no clear link to congenital anomalies, preterm birth, stillbirth, or preeclampsia; early pregnancy loss, which counted miscarriages and terminations together, was 31% more common among exposed women in two studies, a result the authors said needs caution. A companion review led by Claire Meek of the Leicester Diabetes Research Centre said the drugs' global rollout has outpaced guidance for women and cited studies in which most long-term users fell short on vitamin D, iron, and other nutrients.
Researchers at Nanjing Agricultural University reported in Aging Cell, published online Friday, October 2, 2026, that elamipretide increased litter size in aged female mice and improved the quality and maturation of their eggs, an effect they traced to a vitamin B6 and VEGF signaling pathway. In lab experiments, the peptide also improved the maturation, fertilization, and early cell division of eggs from older women. Elamipretide received FDA accelerated approval as Forzinity for the rare mitochondrial disease Barth syndrome in September 2025, and it has not been tested as a fertility treatment in people.
Researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology described in Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, published online Monday, October 5, 2026, a liquid-phase peptide synthesis method that pulls tagged peptides out of solution with hydrophobic magnetic nanoparticles after each coupling and deprotection step, replacing the slow filtration step of conventional tag-assisted synthesis. Liquid-phase synthesis uses fewer reagents and solvents than the standard solid-phase method. The team made the model peptide leucine-enkephalin in high yield and purity without chromatography; the abstract reports results only for that model peptide.
Full results of Novo's REMODEL trial, first presented at the 2026 World Congress of Nephrology, were published in Nature Medicine on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The trial randomized 106 adults with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease to semaglutide 1 mg weekly or placebo for 52 weeks to learn how the drug protects the kidneys. Its coprimary MRI measures of kidney oxygenation, perfusion, and inflammation did not change significantly versus placebo, but semaglutide lowered the renal artery resistive index and kept stable an MRI marker the authors link to scarring, and paired biopsies showed marked effects on the cells lining the kidney's filtering blood vessels, with fewer immune cells nearby. Urine albumin fell 40% in an exploratory analysis; Novo Nordisk funded the trial.
A retrospective study from Taipei Medical University, published in BMC Gastroenterology on Saturday, October 3, 2026, used the U.S. TriNetX health records network to compare 4,870 adults with type 2 diabetes who had a GLP-1 receptor agonist prescription in the three months before a colonoscopy with 4,870 matched adults who did not. Within 12 months, 11.0% of GLP-1 users had a repeat colonoscopy versus 8.9% of nonusers (hazard ratio 1.37), and the gap was similar after June 2023 society guidance on holding the drugs before procedures. The authors used a repeat colonoscopy as a stand-in for poor bowel preparation, which the study did not measure directly, and described the absolute difference as modest.
Researchers led by Wenshe Ray Liu at Texas A&M University described in Nature Communications on Saturday, October 3, 2026 a method called PReP-Bicyc that closes phage-displayed peptides into two rings with a designed linker, which reacts first with a cysteine at the peptide's start and then with two internal cysteines, under mild conditions that keep the phages viable. Screening a library made this way against the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 produced bicyclic peptides with binding affinities below 1 micromolar (best about 400 nM) that selectively labeled PD-1-expressing cells and blocked the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction. The reported results come from laboratory experiments.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong and BayVax Biotech reported in Advanced Science on Friday, October 2, 2026 a vaccine platform called SaPAC that chemically links neoantigen peptides to the TLR7-activating adjuvant 1V209, so the conjugates assemble into nanoparticles of about 100 to 200 nm. In mice, the particles reached lymph nodes better than peptide nanoparticles mixed with free adjuvant, and SaPAC alone slowed tumor growth in melanoma and bladder cancer models. In a triple-negative breast cancer model, combining multivalent SaPAC with anti-PD-1 therapy gave durable tumor suppression comparable to a Poly(I:C)-adjuvanted benchmark without detectable systemic toxicity; all results come from mice.
Researchers at Harbin Medical University reported in CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, published online October 1, 2026, that B9, a peptide derived from the viral protein apoptin, lowered seizure susceptibility, reduced epileptiform activity on EEG, and improved spatial learning and memory in mouse models of acute seizures and kainic acid-induced temporal lobe epilepsy. The team traced the effect to B9 suppressing the heat shock protein HSPA1A and freeing the protein AP2B1, which preserved the glutamate receptor subunit GluA2 and limited calcium overload in neurons; knocking down AP2B1 erased B9's benefits. The findings come from mice only.
Lilly announced on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 an indirect treatment comparison, presented at EASD, of Zepbound (tirzepatide) 10 mg and 15 mg against Novo's Wegovy HD (semaglutide 7.2 mg), using its own SURMOUNT-1 trial and Novo's STEP UP trial in adults with obesity and without diabetes. At 72 weeks, under the treatment-regimen estimand, Zepbound 15 mg and 10 mg were estimated to give 4.5 and 3.2 percentage points more weight loss; under the efficacy estimand, the differences were 1.8 and 0.7 points and were not statistically significant. Lilly said discontinuation for adverse events was comparable; the analysis was Lilly-funded, and the two drugs have not been tested head to head at these doses.
A cross-sectional, case-control study presented at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology Congress in Vienna (September 30 to October 3, 2026) compared 575 GLP-1 receptor agonist users with 1,329 people with type 2 diabetes, obesity, or both who had never taken the drugs, in France, the U.S., Brazil, and Mexico. Users reported nail detachment far more often (39% vs. 9%), along with nail discoloration (46% vs. 17%) and unusual hair loss (50% vs. 34%); after adjustment, nail detachment and discoloration remained roughly two to three times as frequent. The symptoms were self-reported, about half of users said they had nail problems before treatment, and the design cannot show that the drugs cause these changes; Gizmodo reported that the work was funded by Pierre Fabre.
The American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes published their 2026 consensus report on managing type 2 diabetes in non-pregnant adults on Friday, October 2, 2026, in Diabetes Care and Diabetologia, presenting it at EASD in Milan; it updates the 2022 report. Chaired by John Buse and Melanie Davies, it calls for earlier use of glucose-lowering medicines to prevent complications and earlier use of SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1-based therapies to modify disease and reduce complication risk, tailored to each person's cardiovascular and kidney risk. It also sets individualized weight-management goals and gives more attention to coexisting conditions such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).
Two retrospective analyses by Shields Health Solutions and partner health systems, presented at the NASP inSPire2026 specialty pharmacy meeting (September 22-25) and reported by AJMC on September 25, 2026, examined GLP-1 therapy managed by health-system specialty pharmacies. At NYU Langone Health, 115 of 2,943 adults (83.4% commercially insured) who started injectable liraglutide, semaglutide, dulaglutide, or tirzepatide between August 2022 and May 2025 stopped within a year (3.9%), with stopping defined as at least 70 days without medication on hand; rates were 1.8% for tirzepatide, 6.1% for semaglutide, 5.9% for dulaglutide, and 25% for liraglutide. A second analysis of 1,707 patients found a median of five days from prescription to first dispense, prior authorization for 95%, and a median out-of-pocket cost of $24.98; the authors noted the single-organization design and lack of a comparison group.
Ascletis Pharma announced on Friday, October 2, 2026 preclinical data presented at EASD for ASC36_35FDC, a fixed-dose injection that combines its peptide amylin receptor agonist ASC36 with its peptide GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist ASC35. In non-human primates, the two components had half-lives of about 781 hours (33 days) and 721 hours (30 days), which the company says could support once-monthly and possibly once-quarterly dosing in people. In diet-induced obese rats, the combination cut body weight 24.8% at day 14 versus 12.5% for an eloralintide/tirzepatide combination and 16.8% for MET-233i/tirzepatide at the same dosing; the results come from animals only.
Novo presented at EASD on Wednesday, September 30, 2026 OCTANE, a retrospective analysis of de-identified data from the telehealth company Ro covering 194 adults who switched from injectable semaglutide or tirzepatide to the once-daily Wegovy pill between January 5 and February 7, 2026. From a mean baseline weight of 100.5 kg and BMI of 34.5, participants lost an average of 4.1% of body weight (4.0 kg) over three months, 40.7% lost at least 5%, and the share with a BMI of 30 or higher fell from 87.1% to 65.5%. Novo listed limitations including self-reported and incomplete data and selection bias from counting only people who stayed on treatment; the release did not give the injectable doses people switched from.
A post-authorization safety study required by the European Medicines Agency and funded by Novo, presented at EASD by Anton Pottegård of the University of Southern Denmark, compared 97,464 new users of semaglutide for type 2 diabetes in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway with propensity-matched new users of insulin, a sulfonylurea, or an SGLT2 inhibitor. After a one-year lag, there were 131 pancreatic cancers among semaglutide users and 123 among comparators, a pooled hazard ratio of 0.91 (95% CI 0.71 to 1.16). Median follow-up after the lag was 1.4 to 1.85 years, which limits conclusions about longer-term risk.
Novo announced on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 results of COMPETE SWITCH CV, a retrospective analysis of U.S. claims data from Komodo Health (January 2018 to September 2025) in adults with type 2 diabetes who had been taking semaglutide 1 mg. Over up to 720 days, the 185,705 people who escalated to semaglutide 2 mg had a 6% lower adjusted risk of death, heart attack, or stroke than the 23,104 who switched to tirzepatide (adjusted hazard ratio for switching 1.06; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.08). Novo said the analysis shows an association rather than cause and effect, may carry residual confounding, and did not assess safety outcomes.
Lilly announced on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 an indirect treatment comparison, presented at EASD, of its oral small-molecule GLP-1 drug Foundayo (orforglipron) 17.2 mg against Novo's oral semaglutide 25 mg in adults with type 2 diabetes, using data from Lilly's ACHIEVE-3 trial and Novo's PIONEER PLUS trial. At 52 weeks, Foundayo was associated with 1.5 percentage points more weight loss (95% CI -2.7 to -0.2) and a 0.3-point larger A1C reduction (95% CI -0.6 to -0.1); sensitivity analyses gave 1.5 to 2.4 points and 0.3 to 0.6 points. Lilly's Rachel Batterham said head-to-head trials give the best comparison of two medicines, and the two drugs have not been tested directly against each other at these doses.