This new technology could produce blockbuster drugs - pills that replace peptides that today must be given by injection.
The Peptide Boom That Isn’t About Your Muscles
The real opportunity is pill-form peptides that could hit big pharma’s most profitable franchises
By David Wainer, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 25, 2026
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A peptide is simply a short chain of amino acids, often used by the body as a message to do things like quiet inflammation or release insulin. That precision can make peptides useful drugs. Insulin is a peptide. So is Ozempic’s active ingredient, which mimics the gut hormone GLP-1 to control blood sugar and curb appetite.
Until recently, peptides had to be injected because the gut treats them like a piece of steak and digests it. That is what makes the recent breakthrough in pharma so important: Companies are figuring out how to put peptides into pills, and it isn’t just Protagonist…
Protagonist spent more than a decade on the chemistry, drawing inspiration from an unlikely place: venom. A normal peptide is a linear chain, and the gut chews it apart from the loose ends. The venom peptides that snakes and snails use are built as closed loops, which is what lets them survive intact. … [end quote]
There is a long list of peptide drugs that must be given by injection. And other peptides with biological activity that haven’t been developed into drugs yet.
The new technology will cut into the sales of injectables…and also open opportunities for many new drugs.
Wendy