Peptides, mapped to the body and checked against the label.
Every peptide on this map is either an FDA-approved medicine or a cosmetic ingredient. Tap an organ on the body to see what acts there. Every fact on a peptide page links to the source it came from.
New to peptides? Build one in Peptide 101Height scale in cm
Semaglutide
The GLP-1 medicine behind Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus. Four large trials, one molecule you can spin.
Open the page FDA-approvedOxytocin
Nine amino acids, the first peptide hormone ever made in a lab, and still used in labor and delivery wards today.
Open the page FDA-approvedTeriparatide
A piece of parathyroid hormone that builds bone when it is given as a short daily pulse.
Open the pageFind a peptide
- Only FDA-approved peptides and cosmetic ingredients are included.
- Facts come from FDA labels, FDA approval records, PubMed studies and the Protein Data Bank.
- Nothing here is for sale. There are no prices or order buttons in this guide.
- The 3D molecules are real structures, not drawings.
Play
Which came first?
Tap the medicine the FDA approved first. Every date comes from the FDA's Drugs@FDA records.
To share the card, take a screenshot or long-press it on your phone.
The timeline
Every approval in the game, oldest first. Scroll sideways.
Pairs
Flip two tiles at a time. Match each brand name to the molecule inside it. Every pair comes from the FDA's Drugs@FDA records.
Medicine or cosmetic?
Some peptides are FDA-approved medicines. Others are ingredients in skin-care products, which do not need FDA approval. Can you tell them apart? Why cosmetics are different
Swipe left for medicine, right for cosmetic, or use the arrow keys.
What is a peptide, really?
A peptide is a short chain of amino acids. Build one yourself, see where real medicines fall on the size line, then flip the cards to see how chemists change peptides.
Build a chain
Tap a building block to add it to the chain. Orange marks cysteine, the one that can bond to another cysteine and close a chain into a ring.
How long are real peptide medicines?
Each dot is an FDA-approved medicine, placed at the length its FDA label states (semaglutide's label gives no count, so its dot uses its sequence in the Protein Data Bank). The dashed line is 40: under FDA rules, a chain longer than that counts as a protein. Your chain from the lab shows up as the blue marker.
Changes chemists make
Many peptide medicines are not exact copies of the body's own peptides. Tap a card to see a real change made to an approved medicine, straight from its FDA label.
Check yourself
Sources
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Badges for exploring the guide. Your progress is saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How this guide is made
This guide explains peptide medicines in plain English. It is built from primary sources and nothing else.
What is included
- Peptides that are the active ingredient of an FDA-approved medicine. We confirm each one in the FDA's Drugs@FDA database.
- Peptides used as cosmetic ingredients. Cosmetics do not need FDA approval before they are sold, so they are labeled separately.
- Peptides that are not FDA-approved are not covered in this guide.
How a fact gets on a page
- It comes from an FDA label, an FDA approval record, a study listed in PubMed, or the Protein Data Bank.
- We open the source and match the claim against its text. Numbers are copied from the source, not from memory.
- Label facts show the label section they came from, like PI §12.1, so you can find them yourself.
- Each page shows the date its facts were last checked.
How the animations are made
- Each 5-second animation starts and ends on a still frame we render in 3D ourselves. For semaglutide, the drug's start and end positions come from its real structure in the Protein Data Bank. The oxytocin, teriparatide and Peptide 101 animations are simple illustrations.
- An AI video model (Seedance 2.5) fills in the motion between those two frames. We check every frame by eye and remake any clip that adds something that should not be there.
- The semaglutide page also has a live 3D version you can drag. Your browser draws it from the same Protein Data Bank structure, with no AI. Its end position is measured. The path in is drawn so the drug and receptor never pass through each other.
- The animations show ideas. They are not measured results.
What this guide is not
- It is not medical advice. Talk to a licensed clinician about any medicine.
- It does not sell anything. There are no prices, plans or order buttons here.
- It does not give dosing instructions. Doses are set by your prescriber and the label.
Pilot status
This is a pilot with three full pages (semaglutide, oxytocin and teriparatide), a Peptide 101 lab and three games. Every fact has been checked against its source. Your passport progress is saved only in your own browser. Review by a licensed clinician is still to come and will be shown on each page when done.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA authority over cosmetics: how cosmetics are not FDA-approved, but are FDA-regulated. fda.gov