👋 hey researchers,
issue №02. same format, busier month. six stories, each tagged by what moved (trial, regulatory, approval, market, supply, trial). real sources, no opinion smuggled in as fact.
the biggest weight-loss number ever put in a phase 3 trial, and the legal supply closing right behind it. inside: the FDA quietly ends the compounding boom, europe says yes to the pill, and the china panic everyone got wrong.
the king goes first.
retatrutide didn't beat tirzepatide. it lapped it.
TRIUMPH-1 read out May 21. phase 3, 2,339 people, 28.3% average body weight gone at 80 weeks. nearly half the top-dose arm lost a third of themselves. the lowest 4mg dose roughly matched Zepbound, the drug currently running the market.
a full generation sits between the new drug's starting dose and the old one's peak.
the FDA is quietly killing compounded GLP-1.
May 1, a Federal Register proposal to leave semaglutide, tirzepatide, and liraglutide permanently off the 503B bulks list. the agency's logic was blunt: cheaper, more convenient, and out of stock do not count as clinical need.
europe said yes to the pill.
May 22, the EMA's CHMP backed oral semaglutide 25mg for obesity, the continent's first weight-loss pill in the class. OASIS-4 put it at 13.6% average weight loss at 64 weeks.
the pill is already eating everything.
Novo's Q1: the US oral Wegovy pill, five months old, did DKK 2.26 billion (about $330 million) in a single quarter on roughly 1.3 million scripts. the old diabetes oral, Rybelsus, cratered 27% and is being put down in the US.
the gray market got harder. here's who's actually squeezing.
sourcing got weird this month and the forums pinned it on Beijing. half right. China has been choking the research-peptide e-commerce channels since 2023 and hasn't let up. but the specific "China banned HGH and SLU-PP-332 exports" claim has no government source behind it, and China's legal peptide exports actually doubled year over year. the harder squeeze in 2026 is American:
• May 6, Connecticut's AG forced Made-in-China.com to stop selling research-grade GLP-1s to US buyers. $300K penalty, suspended after $30K, plus a 5-day delisting rule.
• March, CBP Chicago seized $3.2M of China-origin HGH and steroids.
• the FDA's Green List and Import Alert 66-80 let the border hold any China GLP-1 ingredient that isn't pre-cleared.
the cravings thing just cleared the Lancet.
May 1, the Lancet ran a randomized trial: in 108 people with alcohol use disorder and obesity, weekly semaglutide plus therapy cut heavy-drinking days well past placebo, a 13.7-point treatment difference (p=0.0015). small and single-site, but the switch widely reported among GLP-1 researchers is now trial-grade.
quiz answer: 28.3%. retatrutide 12mg in TRIUMPH-1 phase 3, 80 weeks. the deepest weight-loss number on record in a phase 3 obesity trial (Lilly topline, May 21 2026).
reptides editorial · research reference, not medical advice.