BPC-157 is sold as capsules, tablets and gummies as well as powder vials, and the question searchers ask is simple: does it work by mouth, and is a capsule the same as an injection? The record answers less than either camp claims. The oral activity is in rats; the human oral record is two registrations without results; and the one formal pharmacokinetic study never gave the peptide by mouth. This page lays that record out (read 2026-10-03) and does the arithmetic the doses allow. It reports; it does not recommend a route or a dose.
The general dosage record for BPC-157 — the injectable registrations, the vendor figures and the vial arithmetic — is on the BPC-157 dosage page; its comparison with TB-500 is on BPC-157 vs TB-500. The injected routes, and what the record does and does not say about injection sites, are on injecting BPC-157.
The two routes side by side
| Question | By mouth | By injection |
|---|---|---|
| FDA-labelled product | None | None |
| Human pharmacokinetics | None published | Two people, intravenous, half-life under 30 minutes |
| Animal bioavailability measured | Not in the 2022 rat and dog study | Intramuscular 14%–19% (rats), 45%–51% (dogs) |
| Human registrations | NCT02637284 (tablets, 2015, unknown status); NCT07752381 (gummy, completed) | NCT07803250, NCT07437547 (subcutaneous, no dose stated) |
| Rat doses in the literature | 10 µg/kg and 10 ng/kg a day | 10 µg/kg and 10 ng/kg, mostly intraperitoneal |
| Off-label human range (2026 review) | 200–500 µg a day | 200–500 µg a day |
The last row is the one to notice. The same range is used for both routes, which only makes sense if the gut delivers what a needle does — and that is precisely what has never been measured.
Why "stable in the stomach" is not "absorbed"
BPC-157 was isolated from a fraction of human gastric juice in Zagreb in the early 1990s, and its developers call it a "stable gastric pentadecapeptide": it survives gastric juice at pH 1 to 2 with pepsin, conditions that digest most peptides. That property is real and well documented, and it is the main argument for capsules.
The 2026 review by Mateescu and colleagues (Pharmaceutics, PMID 42198317) sets out what it does not settle. Surviving the stomach is one barrier of several; intestinal stability, crossing the gut wall, first-pass metabolism in the liver and lymphatic uptake are the others, and none has been characterised for BPC-157. The oral peptides that did reach approval — semaglutide among them — needed chemical modification or a permeation enhancer, and even then semaglutide tablets deliver about 1% to 2% of their dose (the arithmetic is on oral semaglutide dosage). The review concludes that whether BPC-157's own properties support "clinically meaningful oral bioavailability" cannot be determined from the data.
The oral record in people
Two ClinicalTrials.gov records give BPC-157 by mouth (search for BPC-157, BPC 157 or pentadecapeptide, 2026-10-03: four records in all).
NCT02637284, PharmaCotherapia d.o.o., phase 1, start October 2015, 42 participants estimated. It planned single doses of PCO-02 tablets, each containing 1 mg of BPC-157 under the name Bepecin — one, three or six tablets in its first three cohorts of 12. Its status is "unknown" and no results have been posted in the decade since.
NCT07752381, Parlay Wellness, 40 participants, start 2025-09-01, completed. Everyone received a dietary-supplement gummy containing 500 micrograms of BPC-157 per serving, with inflammation and performance markers as outcomes. There was no comparison group in the arm list, and no results are posted.
The two injectable records (rotator-cuff repair and hamstring strain) state no dose; they are described on the BPC-157 dosage page.
The rat doses, and what scaling does to them
Most BPC-157 research comes from one group and uses one dose pair: 10 micrograms and 10 nanograms per kilogram a day, given by mouth in drinking water, by stomach tube or by injection. A 2025 quadriceps-detachment study, for example, describes the per-oral regimen as "BPC 157/kg/day 10 µg, 10 ng" (PMID 39861766). The review notes that almost every study uses a single dose level, so no oral dose-response curve exists.
| Rat dose | Plain per-kg at 70 kg | FDA body-surface scaling (÷ 6.2) at 70 kg |
|---|---|---|
| 10 µg/kg/day | 700 µg | ≈113 µg |
| 10 ng/kg/day | 0.7 µg | ≈0.11 µg |
The 6.2 is the rat factor in FDA's 2005 guidance on estimating the maximum safe starting dose in first-in-human trials (Table 1); applying it here is arithmetic, not a dose finding. The only published attempt at formal translation — by the authors of the 2022 pharmacokinetic study — proposed about 200 micrograms per person per day from the rat range of 6 to 50 µg/kg, and the review says that figure "requires validation against human pharmacokinetic data". All of these are injected-equivalent conversions. None carries an oral absorption figure, because none exists.
Injection arithmetic, for comparison
An injected dose can at least be measured out. Units on a U-100 syringe = mg ÷ mg/mL × 100:
| Draw | 5 mg vial + 2 mL (2.5 mg/mL) | 5 mg vial + 1 mL (5 mg/mL) | 10 mg vial + 2 mL (5 mg/mL) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 µg | 10 units | 5 units | 5 units |
| 500 µg | 20 units | 10 units | 10 units |
A capsule labelled 500 micrograms has no equivalent in this table: what reaches the circulation from it is unknown. Water volumes per vial size are on BPC-157 reconstitution, the conversion on mg to units, and any vial in the calculator's BPC-157 setting.
Regulatory status, briefly
FDA's Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee took up BPC-157 (free base and acetate) for the 503A bulks list on 2026-07-23; the chart on FDA's meeting page lists ulcerative colitis as the only use FDA reviewed. Whether a compounder may use it, and in what form, follows from that process — no oral or injectable product is approved. The compound and its evidence are in Medibact's BPC-157 guide.
What is not established
How much of an oral dose is absorbed, in any species, in a published pharmacokinetic study. Whether the rat oral effects reproduce in people. Whether 500 micrograms by mouth and by injection are in any sense the same dose. The record supports describing the oral route as untested in humans, not as equivalent and not as inactive. Nothing on this page is an instruction; any decision about a product, a route or a dose belongs with a clinician.
Sources and dates
Opened 2026-10-03: ClinicalTrials.gov API records NCT02637284 (arms and interventions), NCT07752381 (intervention), and the search returning four BPC-157 records; PubMed abstracts 36588717 (He et al., Front Pharmacol 2022) and 39861766 (Pharmaceutics 2025); the full text of PMID 42198317 (Mateescu et al., Pharmaceutics 2026, PMC13210877) for gastric stability, the two-person intravenous pilot, the 200–500 µg off-label range and dose translation; FDA's 2005 guidance on the maximum safe starting dose in initial clinical trials (Table 1, conversion factors); FDA's July 23–24, 2026 Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee page. Scaled doses and units are arithmetic by this site. Corrections go to the contact page.