After Ozempic: the revolution in peptide science | Jonathan Long

Health influencers and scientists have both gone crazy for peptides.

The peptide health craze stems from a lot of online hype — centered on gray-market compounds that haven't been rigorously tested in humans and aren't regulated for safety or purity. But among scientists, there is a genuine "revolution" underway — spurred by technological developments revealing an order of magnitude more peptides in our bodies than we ever realized, and by the unexpected and unparalleled success of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.

To learn more about what’s driving this excitement – and how much of the peptide hype is really worth your attention – we spoke with Stanford biochemist Jonathan Long, an associate professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine, an affiliate of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, and an Institute Scholar of Stanford Sarafan ChEM-H.

Editor's Note: After we went to press, Colorado biotech Enveda announced promising but early Phase 1 safety results for ENV-308, an oral drug engineered to mimic Lac-Phe — the "exercise in a pill" molecule Long's lab first characterized in 2022. The trial didn't test actual weight-loss or fitness effects, so the real thing isn't here yet — but Long, a scientific advisor to Enveda, calls it "an extremely exciting potential scientific breakthrough." Read more

Learn more

• Long Lab of Chemical Physiology
• An ‘Exercise Pill’ Just Cleared Its First Human Test (Gizmodo, 2026)
• A pill that mimics exercise? Early results on drug designed to maintain both weight loss and muscle mass (STAT, 2026)
• Peptides are everywhere. Here’s what you need to know. (MIT Technology Review, 2026)
• Influencers are promoting peptides for better health. What does the science say? (NPR, 2026)
• What doctors want patients to know about injectable peptides (American Medical Association, 2026)
• Why Are People Injecting Themselves with Peptides? (The New Yorker, 2026)
• Peptides are buzzing: But what does the science say? (Stanford Medicine, 2026)
• Study of pythons’ extreme diet reveals new hunger-curbing molecule (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2026)
• Unlocking the secrets of ketosis (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2024)
• Weight loss caused by common diabetes drug tied to "anti-hunger" molecule in study (Stanford Medicine, 2024)
• Q&A: Unlocking the secrets of taurine in obesity control (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2024)
• Exercise and the brain (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2023)
• Lac-Phe mediates the effects metformin on food intake and body weight (Nature Metabolism, 2024)

Send us a text!

Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.

We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu

Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.