Tech workers in Silicon Valley are increasingly experimenting with gray-market peptide drugs from China, legal for personal use, for improving focus and more
Jayden Clark first heard about Chinese peptides at his Fourth of July party this past year. — In the backyard of a San Francisco …
New York Times Jasmine Sun
Related Coverage
- Odd Lots: The Booming Business of Chinese Peptides Bloomberg
- Not For Human Consumption — Grey market peptides have built a parallel pharmaceutical … Vectorculture · Somewhere
- Reading about Silicon Valley's “Chinese peptides” craze, I couldn't help but notice a familiar pattern wearing new clothes. … Grzegorz Zatoń
- https://lnkd.in/... Sometimes you read an article and get a glimpse of the future. Where parents inject their kids with HGH so they get past … Nadiah Wan
- “Peptides are short chains of amino acids that regulate hormones and reduce inflammation in the human body. They are best known as the P in GLP-1s — the class of drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy, which have transformed the weight-loss industry by mimicking a hormone that suppresses appetite. … @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org · Miguel Afonso Caetano
Discussion
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@synbio1
@synbio1
on x
The discourse around Chinese peptides cleanly divides two classes of elites: Tech elites who say “you can just do things” and biopharma elites who say “trust the experts” I believe the most important dynamic in biotech in 2026 is the decisive shift in favor of the tech side
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@margbaramerica
Mohammad
on x
@jasminewsun i come from the steroid world and i think everyone collectively regrets not gatekeeping this world better from these SV freaks, facebook moms group purchasers, or tiktok teens buying them on sketchy clearweb sites. regular people should have never known about these t…
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@jasminewsun
Jasmine Sun
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2025 was the year that “Chinese peptides” took over SF. I wrote about it in my first for the NYT: gift link here https://www.nytimes.com/... [image]
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@jasminewsun
Jasmine Sun
on x
@carygee1 not all but most, China generally has better mass manufacturing ecosystems + probably looser quality standards (eg non cGMP approved factories)
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@joelgombiner
Joel Gombiner
on x
@jasminewsun Nailed it on Odd Lots. You were very clear and knew the topic... one of the better guests. The whole thing sounds insane to me. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some hard lessons learned about how biological science works and eventual litigation
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@gptbrooke
Brooke Bowman
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I love that ‘bushy haired and fast talking’ is how I wind up described in my first NYT mention
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@sexylikemeiosis
Whimsy Lohan
on x
given the amount of organizational effort we put into this (+ the fact that it was literally @Bonecondor's birthday party) seems insane that we were not mentioned in this article! but there's a cute picture of my arm 🫠 next party will be even more epic https://www.nytimes.com/...
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@jasminewsun
Jasmine Sun
on x
very fun reporting this because the peptide story is about biohacking, supply chains, pharma regs, and a million other things that did not fit in the 2k word limit thank you to @creatine_cycle, @typesfaster, @gptbrooke, @EricTopol, @AnelyaGrant, @paulabramsonmd, @akesselheim, [im…
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@jasminewsun
Jasmine Sun
on x
@MargBarAmerica I didn't get to research it as much but the whole tiktok marketing peptides to teens stuff is pretty scary IMO
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@gavinpurcell
Gavin Purcell
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@jasminewsun oh i heard about these on Odd Lots, I need to figure out how dumb it would be to try
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@gptbrooke
Brooke Bowman
on x
To nitpick a little, I believe what I said was that I don't like the term transhumanist but that most people would probably consider me one.. Overall though, the article was fun! I'm a little crestfallen they didn't wind up using any of the photos they took of me, had a lot of
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@paulabramsonmd
Paul Abramson MD
on x
I'm quoted in today's NYT on the “Chinese peptides” trend. My take: “The entrepreneurial parallel isn't funding a scrappy startup. It's wiring money to an unregistered offshore entity based on a pitch deck.” https://buff.ly/n5nEobl [image]
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@jasminewsun
Jasmine Sun
on x
@gptbrooke bummer about the photos, didn't get to choose those or captions! the transcript I have on transhumanism is “Under most definitions, I probably qualify as one” and then the microchip anecdote — you didn't mention not liking the term, so that was my interp, but noted for…
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@user3619489
@user3619489
on x
@jasminewsun As someone doing a chemistry PhD in medchem / peptides... I'm at a loss of words. Wow.
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@poppy_haze
Rev. Poppy Haze
on x
Injecting mysterious Chinese drugs to code 12% faster: A-Ok, funky trend Injecting Estrogen to Trans your Gender: Sinister, need 500 op-Eds about how it's unprecedented
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@jasminewsun
Jasmine Sun
on x
@gavinpurcell I think Odd Lots was also me haha The GLPs (semaglutide, tirzepatide, retatrutide) are the most tested; the other peptides like BPC have very little human trial evidence / the risk profile is much higher. Gray-market sourcing is also another big risk vector, and the…
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@carygee1
Cary Gee
on x
@jasminewsun Great article. Peptides are only made in China?
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@synbio1
@synbio1
on x
This article in the Times does a great job laying out the perspectives, richly sampling quotes from both biopharma and tech culture, pro-peptide and anti-peptide https://www.nytimes.com/...