Peptide News Digest

Cancer Survivors Less Likely to Use GLP-1s, Semaglutide Works Despite Food Cravings, Merck's PepOpt Peptide AI

Adults with diabetes and past cancer use GLP-1s less often, semaglutide helps people with food cravings, and Merck reports a peptide design tool.

5 stories · Covering research

Editor's Note

Monday's verified news came from journals rather than companies, and much of it was about who gets GLP-1 drugs and when. A national survey found adults with diabetes and a cancer history about 30% less likely to use a GLP-1 drug than other adults with diabetes, and the authors could not tell whether that reflects caution, eligibility, or missed care. A small Milan study found semaglutide added about 3 kg of weight loss over diet alone at six months whether or not patients reported strong food cravings, and a Warsaw review found only thin, mostly retrospective evidence for GLP-1 drugs in steroid-induced high blood sugar. On the discovery side, Merck chemists and Texas Tech engineers described PepOpt, a machine-learning tool for designing peptides with unnatural amino acids, and a Feinstein Institutes team reported a peptide that helps immune cells clear inflammatory debris after radiation, so far only in cells.

Research

Adults With Diabetes and a Cancer History Had About 30% Lower Odds of Using GLP-1 Drugs, National Survey Finds

Researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and MD Anderson Cancer Center reported in JAMA Network Open on October 7, 2026 an analysis of 3,615 adults with diabetes in the 2024 National Health Interview Survey, representing 26.4 million U.S. adults. After adjustment, 20.5% of those with a cancer history used an injectable GLP-1 drug, compared with 26.5% of those without, a gap of 6.0 percentage points (adjusted odds ratio 0.70). The difference was not statistically significant when the analysis was limited to type 2 diabetes, and the authors said the survey cannot show whether the gap reflects eligibility, prescribing caution, patient choice, or access.

#glp-1 #cancer #type-2-diabetes #access-equity
Research

Semaglutide Plus Diet Beat Diet Alone by About 3 kg at Six Months in Milan Patients With and Without Food Cravings

Researchers at IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano and the University of Milan reported in Frontiers in Endocrinology on October 12, 2026 a retrospective study of 120 adults with obesity, 67 given semaglutide with a reduced-calorie diet and 53 the diet alone. At six months the semaglutide group lost 3.3 kg more, with similar gaps in people who reported strong food cravings (3.1 kg) and those who did not (3.4 kg). The study was small, not randomized, and lasted six months.

#semaglutide #food-cravings #real-world-evidence #obesity
Research

Review Finds Only Thin, Mostly Retrospective Evidence for GLP-1 Drugs in Steroid-Induced High Blood Sugar

A Medical University of Warsaw systematic review published October 8, 2026 in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism found 13 studies, mostly retrospective and 10 in organ transplant recipients, of GLP-1 drugs for high blood sugar caused by glucocorticoid steroids. Most reported lower HbA1c, body weight, and insulin doses with few low-blood-sugar episodes, but no outcome was supported by more than three studies and the certainty of evidence was very low. The authors called for prospective trials; insulin remains the standard treatment.

#glp-1 #glucocorticoids #transplant #systematic-review
Research

Merck and Texas Tech Describe PepOpt, a Machine-Learning Tool for Optimizing Peptides Built With Unnatural Amino Acids

Researchers from Merck's discovery chemistry group and Texas Tech University reported in npj Drug Discovery on October 12, 2026 PepOpt, a machine-learning framework for peptide lead optimization that combines chemical-structure and sequence descriptions in simple linear models. The authors report that it predicts activity accurately, can handle noncanonical amino acids absent from its training data when their building blocks are represented, breaks each prediction into contributions from individual residues, and can search peptide design spaces of more than 10^50 possibilities without testing every sequence. The paper presents a design tool, not a new drug.

#ai-drug-design #merck #noncanonical-amino-acids #peptide-design
Research

Feinstein Institutes' Opsonic Peptide OP18 Helps Immune Cells Clear Radiation-Induced Inflammatory Debris in Lab Tests

Researchers at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research reported in Frontiers in Immunology on October 12, 2026 that OP18, an opsonic peptide that tags damage signals such as histone H3 and HMGB1 for removal, increased the uptake of macrophage extracellular traps, sticky webs that radiation-damaged immune cells release, through the αvβ3 integrin. Clearing the traps eased mitochondrial stress in macrophages, raised the anti-inflammatory signal IL-10, and showed a trend toward lower NF-κB activation. The results come from cell experiments only.

#radiation-injury #inflammation #opsonic-peptides #preclinical

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