On a recent episode of TBPN, hosts invited self-described “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli and healthcare entrepreneur Max Marchione to debate the growing popularity of peptides.
The conversation quickly zeroed in on one peptide in particular: BPC 157. It has gained significant attention in wellness and biohacking circles despite limited clinical validation.
Shkreli opened the discussion with an assessment, leaving little room for ambiguity. “BPC 157 is the biggest scam I’ve ever seen. It does absolutely nothing. There’s no redeemable value to this,” he said.
He then laid out his argument by focusing on the origins and the lack of independent scientific validation. According to Shkreli, the research base behind BPC 157 is unusually narrow.
“This guy in Croatia made it. The only publications about this d**g are by him. Nobody else has published about this d**g,” he said.
He also questioned the biological plausibility of the peptide itself. “Nobody has even confirmed that it’s a peptide from the gastric juice as he claimed. Nobody can find a sequence that matches that. And the gastric juice of human beings has been thoroughly profiled. It’s a 15 peptide, so it’s 15 amino acids. Half-life is minutes. There’s no plausible physiological basis for it to work.”
To reinforce his skepticism, Shkreli pointed to what he described as a failed attempt to commercialize the peptide through formal d**g development channels.
“Pliva was a local d**g company in the Balkans, very well respected. They licensed BPC and tried to do clinical trials for it. And guess what? They failed,” he said.
Max pushed back against that conclusion, arguing that real-world clinical usage should not be dismissed simply because randomized controlled trials are limited. He emphasized the scale of anecdotal and practitioner-driven use over the past two decades.
“Thousands of doctors prescribed this. They do and have prescribed this for 10 to 20 years. Millions of patients have taken this, at least hundreds of thousands, I believe millions have taken this. And that clinical experience, again, is not an RCT, but we cannot ignore it,” he said.
To illustrate his point, Max shared two personal stories that he said shaped his perspective on the peptide. The first involved his father, who had been struggling with chronic back pain.
He said, “My dad’s visiting from Australia and he’s been taking painkillers for the past four months and can’t walk upstairs because his back is bad. He took BPC 157 for three days and he said to me, ‘Max, this is the first time in four months I haven’t taken a painkiller.'”
He also described the experience of his co-founder, who had faced a severe medical crisis. “He lost three organs in hospital. He had an autoimmune disease. They put him on biologics. He took BPC 157. He’s off biologics and he doesn’t have an autoimmune disease anymore,” Max said.
Despite those accounts, Shkreli remained firmly unconvinced and reiterated his confidence in the scientific process. “I would bet anything. No trial of BPC would work,” he said.
Max, for his part, acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the peptide and stopped short of claiming definitive proof. “I’m not saying this isn’t placebo. I’m saying we don’t know,” he said, adding that his company is now moving toward more formal evaluation. “We’re working with a handful of different biotech companies that are taking these through clinical trials.”
Shkreli closed the exchange by returning to his central argument. “Pharma did try to develop BPC and failed,” he said.
