Learn the science
Enough context to read a paper without being sold one.
Six essays are finished. The rest of the planned curriculum is unpublished, on purpose. These pages do not cite anything that is not already in the evidence index or plain chemistry.
- What is a peptide?A short chain of amino acids. That sentence is true, and it is not a medical category.
- How to read a clinical trialThe abstract is a trailer. The useful parts are who was studied, what was compared, and what was left out.
- Why animal results so often stallA mouse is a serious experimental system. It is not a small human.
- What an approval actually coversRegulators approve products for indications. They do not approve a nickname.
- Evidence is not proofA paper can be real, narrow, and still the wrong size for the claim someone wants.
- Purity, labels, and what a COA cannot sayA certificate can support identity. It cannot bless a use.
Or follow a pathway on the molecule map
Terms, in plain English
AgonistOpenClose
A molecule that turns a receptor on. Blocking it would be an antagonist.
AntagonistOpenClose
A molecule that occupies a receptor and keeps the usual signal from getting through.
Half-lifeOpenClose
How long it takes for the amount in circulation to fall by half. It is not a dosing schedule, and this library does not invent one when a study hasn’t measured it.
PharmacokineticsOpenClose
What the body does to the molecule: absorption, spread, breakdown, and clearance.
PharmacodynamicsOpenClose
What the molecule does to the body: which receptors or pathways it moves, and what that change looks like.
Randomized trialOpenClose
People are assigned to a treatment or a comparison by chance, so the groups start out as alike as possible. It is the least bad way to ask “did the drug do this?”
PlaceboOpenClose
An inactive comparison. Without one, improvement can be time, attention, or expectation rather than the molecule.
BioavailabilityOpenClose
How much of a dose actually reaches circulation. Swallowing a peptide and injecting it are not the same experiment.
ImmunogenicityOpenClose
The chance the immune system treats the molecule as foreign and makes antibodies. Quiet anecdotes are not a measurement of that.
In vitroOpenClose
In glass: cells or proteins outside a living animal. Useful for mechanism. Not a person.
In vivoOpenClose
In a living animal or person. A mouse result is in vivo and still not a human result.
LyophilizationOpenClose
Freeze-drying. The powder in a research vial is often a dried cake. Adding liquid is a separate step, not a reversal that the powder remembers perfectly.
ReconstitutionOpenClose
Adding a liquid to a dry powder to make a solution. Which liquid is safe for which molecule is a formulation question, not a universal recipe.
Surrogate endpointOpenClose
A measurement used as a stand-in for something patients feel, like a strength score instead of “can this person walk farther.” It can be wrong about the thing that matters.
Accelerated approvalOpenClose
The FDA allows an earlier approval for a serious condition based on a surrogate reasonably likely to predict benefit. A later trial still has to show that patients actually benefit. Forzinity is an example.
Statistical significanceOpenClose
A result unlikely to be a coin-flip fluke under the study’s assumptions. It is not the same as “big,” “important,” or “safe.”