BPC-157 is a peptide with very interesting properties indeed.

The acronym BPC stands for “Body Protective Compound,” and it is a peptide.

What are peptides?

Peptides are molecules consisting of two or more amino acids linked together by peptide bonds.

The simplest peptides are dipeptides (2 amino acids), followed by tripeptides (3 amino acids), tetrapeptide (4 amino acids), pentapeptide (5 amino acids), hexapeptide (6 amino acids), etc.

Peptides are in every tissue and cell in the body.

They play a key role in many biological activities and are found in all living organisms.

Exactly as with proteins, peptides are formed naturally from the transcription of a sequence of the genetic code, DNA.

BPC-157 has been shown to have many benefits for health and physical well-being.

The human body already produces it in very small amounts in the gastric juices,and it has a protective and healing function in the cells of the intestines.

BPC-157 is a penta-decapeptide that is a peptide composed of 15 amino acids.

BPC-157 is a derivative of a natural protein called body protection compound (BPC) found in the digestive tract, where it plays an important role in protecting the stomach lining from gastric juices.

BPC-157 was first isolated by scientist Predrag Sikiric and his team of researchers at the University of Zagreb in the early 1990s.

Research has since revealed that the healing properties of BPC-157 go far beyond the intestines.

(Prof. Predrag Sikiric)

Peptide has been shown to perform the following functions:

• promotes wound healing in various tissues
• increases the growth rate of blood vessels
• improves blood clotting
• enhances the immune system.

In addition, BPC-157 has been shown to protect organs and help prevent gastric ulcers.

BPC-157 also acts in the digestive tract to combat leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome, gastrointestinal cramps, and Crohn’s disease.

This peptide is also known to possess analgesic characteristics.

Research has shown its ability to help skin burns heal more rapidly by increasing blood flow to damaged tissues.

BPC-157 significantly accelerates reticulin and collagen formation and angiogenesis, as well as stimulating macrophage and fibroblast infiltration, representing a potential therapeutic tool in the management of wound healing.

How does BPC-157 work?

In order to understand how BPC-157 can have such wide-ranging therapeutic effects, it is necessary to start at the most basic level of its activity to see how its properties add on top of each other to create the beneficial effects on the body of this “miraculous” healing peptide.

How does BPC-157 act in blood vessels?

Research shows that BPC-157 acts in two different ways on blood vessels.

First, it helps blood vessels relax so that blood flows more easily through them.

It does this by increasing concentrations of a natural compound called nitric oxide.

Nitric oxide is critical not only for maintaining blood pressure, but also for the health of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

The second way in which BPC-157 acts in blood vessels is by directly stimulating endothelial cell growth.

BPC-157 appears to increase endothelial cell growth by stimulating a growth factor known as VEGF.

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is involved in neuronal development and angiogenesis and plays an essential role in maintaining the homeostasis of the adult vascular system.

These results indicate that BPC-157 likely causes changes in DNA expression patterns favorable for blood vessel growth and health.

Recent research has suggested that BPC-157 might be useful in the treatment of COVID-19.

BPC-157 was found to prevent clot formation in both arteries and veins.

This would make it potentially useful in the severe clotting that sometimes accompanies COVID-19 infection and other pathological conditions.

BPC-157 prevents clots by increasing the concentration of nitric oxide.

Nitric oxide prevents platelets (special blood cells) from coming together to form the first stages of a clot.

BPC-157 not only prevents clots, however, but also prevents excessive bleeding.

BPC-157 helps normalize the clotting system and prevent extremes of both.

It appears to act through several vascular pathways, including those already mentioned (VEGF and nitric oxide) and Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK).

FAK stands for focal adhesion kinase and is a protein that determines how cells attach to each other.

It is important in the coagulation process and in a number of normal and pathological processes.

BPC-157 has been shown to have a direct effect on FAK expression.

How does BPC 157 act in wound repair?

Through its actions in blood vessels BPC-157 is able to accelerate wound healing and to help restore blood flow in damaged tissues.

Research shows that BPC-157 increases both angiogenesis, or the growth of blood vessels, and blood flow through vessels to the area affected by an injury.

Its benefits on blood vessel growth, however, are not the only reason why BPC-157 improves wound healing.

Studies have also shown that the peptide increases the rate at which fibroblasts move into injured tissue.

Fibroblasts are characteristic cells of connective tissue, which can have very different shapes from each other.

The job of fibroblasts is to produce connective matrix, molecules intended to support other tissues.

Under physiological conditions they proliferate and thus enable cell turnover, or they intervene in an inflammatory process or in wound healing.

BPC-157 is so effective in improving wound repair rates that it has been studied for fistula healing.

Like tendons, which will be discussed later, fistulas are notoriously difficult to treat.

The average fistula takes more than two and a half years to heal, even with all that modern medicine has to offer.

With BPC-157, healing rates in animal models are reduced to less than one month.

How does BPC 157 work in tendon healing?

Tendons and ligaments are notoriously difficult to treat and heal because of their limited blood supply.

Poor blood supply prevents fibroblasts and immune system cells from reaching the injury site in sufficient numbers to have a beneficial effect.

Even with surgery, tendon healing is a slow and often unsuccessful process.

Trials of the molecule in animal models of tendon, ligament, and even bone injuries suggest that BPC-157 provides significant benefits.

Studies in healing tissues show increased levels of bFGF, EFG and VEGF following administration of BPC-157.

This means that BPC-157 increases, directly or indirectly, the levels of hormones and growth factors needed to direct cells to the site of injury.

The higher the levels of these growth factors, the faster the healing.

There is also good evidence from experiments done in cell culture showing that BPC-157 dramatically increases the number of receptors for growth hormone GH) in tendons.

Growth hormone is well known for its ability to accelerate wound healing, increase musculoskeletal development, and enhance immune function.

The advantage of BPC-157 is that it increases the number of GH receptors, rather than increasing GH levels.

This provides the benefits of concentrated GH action on the injured tendon, without the side effects of increasing GH levels throughout the body.

How does BPC-157 act in modifying DNA expression?

All research to date indicates that BPC-157 could activate the EGR1, NAB2, FAK-paxillin and JAK-2 pathways to alter DNA expression patterns.

In other words, BPC-157 modifies DNA functioning to promote wound healing,improve blood clotting, accelerate tissue healing and more.

-EGR1:

EGR1 is a regulator of DNA transcription found in the brain.

Its job is to turn genes on and off.

Research shows that EGR1 is important for fibroblast activity, neuron growth, and ovarian function.

There is a lot of evidence showing that BPC-157 is active in the brain, where it probably acts through EGR1 to increase neuron development.

-NAB2:

NAB2 is associated with EGR1 and helps tune DNA to make certain proteins more or less active.

The list of proteins on which NAB2 acts is extensive:

-FAK-paxillin

As mentioned above, FAK is important for cell adhesion.

So is paxillin.

Together, these proteins help determine whether cells adhere or remain separated.

BPC-157 acts on these proteins to help modulate blood coagulation and cell movement.

-JAK-2:

JAK-2 and the related JAK-STAT pathway are critical for cell division and immune system function.

These pathways help communicate to DNA what is happening outside the cell.

BPC-157 likely uses these pathways to signal to DNA the need for cell growth, division, and specialization.

This leads to more cells and more specialized cells for immune response, wound repair, and more.

BPC-157 and cancer

There is a lot of confusion around the topic of BPC 157 because of the idea that this peptide may be potentially cancer-causing.

It is not.

The argument is that because BPC-157 stimulates VEGF secretion and increased VEGF secretion is provides blood vessels to cancer cells, BPC-157 may promote cancer.

This line of inference, a form of reasoning by correlation rather than rational biological mechanisms and solid research, is incorrect.

First, VEGF increases in response to decreased oxygen levels (hypoxia), not cell growth.

In the case of cancer, when tumors begin to grow, they cause hypoxia in their environment.

The body responds to this by secreting VEGF to bring more blood vessels into the area.

Therefore, the secretion of VEGF around tumors is not pathological, but rather the body’s normal response to the lack of oxygen.

Simply put, VEGF secretion does not cause cancer growth, but cancer growth causes VEGF secretion.

The suggested link between BPC-157 and increased tumor growth becomes even more absurd when one considers that BPC-157 is a homeostatic molecule.

In other words, BPC-157 promotes balance, from blood vessel growth to inflammatory responses.

The latter fact is important because tumor growth is accompanied by an increase in inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-6, and others.

Research shows that BPC-157 directly counteracts the increase in these inflammatory cytokines, thus helping to counteract some of the pathways that lead to cancer growth.

In fact, a recent study on melanoma growth and the role of BPC-157 found that BPC-157 effectively inhibits cell growth and VEGF signaling in skin cancer cells.

Again, this is consistent with the role of BPC-157 as a homeostatic regulator.

It promotes restoration of balance, not necessarily growth.

In case of injury, when tissue is damaged and oxygen is depleted, the balance shifts toward growth.

But in the case of overgrowth, as in cancer, the balance shifts toward quiescence.

So what is the end result?

The conclusion is that while BPC-157 increases VEGF in wound healing, it does not universally increase VEGF in all tissues, but only in the area of injury.

This is because BPC-157 mainly promotes homeostasis.

Cancer arises from DNA damage and genetic mutations, not from blood vessel growth and certainly not from homeostasis.

Recall that BPC-157 is derived from a natural compound found in the human gastrointestinal tract.

How does BPC-157 work overall?

BPC-157 is still being studied to understand exactly how it works.

What is clear at this point is that the peptide actively modulates the levels of several growth factors and signaling hormones to stabilize blood vessel growth, blood clotting, immune function, and tissue repair.

This coordinated activity suggests that BPC-157 alters DNA expression patterns in a way that helps improve the tissue environment to optimize injury repair.

One thing that is clear is that many of the benefits conferred by BPC-157 can be attributed in some way to its ability to increase nitric oxide.

In previous sections, it was examined how nitric oxide increases blood flow and reduces blood clotting, but the molecule has other benefits as well.

Nitric oxide also lowers bad cholesterol (LDL), reduces plaque formation in coronary arteries that lead to heart attacks and strokes, fights free radicals, and more.

According to Dr. Rudolf Rucman of the University of Zagreb, BPC-157 plays a role in helping the body restore homeostasis.

In other words, the peptide helps the organism return to baseline values after injury.

This is in line with the fact that BPC-157 is a modulator of DNA expression patterns.

BPC 157 acts at the most fundamental level of our biology, gene expression, to optimize the body’s ability to respond to stress and injury.

DOSING AND ADMINISTRATION

In terms of intake, the effective dosage of BPC-157 turns out to be 5 mcg (micrograms) per day via subcutaneous injection, for as long as healing takes place.

BPC-157 is usually available from specialized vendors in vials to be recombined with bacteriostatic (injectable) water or in convenient nasal spray bottles.

Some companies produce BPC-157 in oral tablets, but oral intake of BPC-157 appears to be much less bioavailable than the other two, and therefore ineffective.

mentioned above.