A peptide that mimics Ozempic
Stanford scientists identified a small peptide called BRP that appears to mimic the appetite‑suppressing effects associated with GLP‑1 drugs but — in early lab work — may avoid many of the unpleasant side effects seen with current medicines. The work is preclinical and framed as a potential next‑step therapy rather than a patient treatment today (sciencedaily.com).
Weight-loss drugs work by telling the body it has eaten enough, and Stanford researchers say a 12-amino-acid peptide called BRP may send a similar stop-eating signal in animals. (med.stanford.edu) Stanford Medicine published the work on March 5, 2025, in *Nature*, with pathology professor Katrin Svensson as senior author and senior research scientist Laetitia Coassolo as lead author. (med.stanford.edu) (nature.com) The team said BRP reduced appetite and body weight in mice and pigs, and the Stanford report said the animals did not show nausea, food aversion, constipation, or the muscle loss often seen with some current medicines. (med.stanford.edu) Current drugs such as semaglutide mimic glucagon-like peptide-1, a gut hormone released after eating that slows stomach emptying, lowers blood sugar, and also acts on the brain to reduce appetite. (med.stanford.edu) (nature.com) Stanford said BRP appears to take a narrower route: it acts in the hypothalamus, a brain region that helps control hunger and metabolism, rather than broadly hitting receptors in the gut, pancreas, and other tissues. (med.stanford.edu) (nature.com) The peptide came out of a computational search through prohormones, which are larger inactive proteins that can be chopped into smaller signaling fragments. Stanford said artificial intelligence helped the team predict which fragments might become biologically active peptides. (med.stanford.edu) (nature.com) That search matters because peptide hormones are hard to find in the body’s chemical mix, and BRP was described by *Nature Reviews Drug Discovery* as a “non-incretin” appetite-suppressing peptide, meaning it is outside the glucagon-like peptide-1 family that dominates today’s obesity drugs. (med.stanford.edu) (nature.com) The backdrop is a fast-moving obesity-drug market in which response and side effects vary widely from person to person. A *Nature* paper published April 8, 2026, analyzing 27,885 people on glucagon-like peptide-1 medicines found genetic links to both extra weight loss and higher odds of nausea or vomiting. (nature.com) Stanford has also been looking beyond glucagon-like peptide-1 drugs for other appetite pathways. On March 19, 2026, the same institution reported a python-derived molecule that rose by about 1,000-fold after feeding and caused obese mice to eat less and lose weight, similar to semaglutide. (med.stanford.edu) BRP is still a lab-stage finding, not a treatment patients can get now, and Stanford said Svensson has co-founded a company to move the molecule toward human clinical trials. (med.stanford.edu)
