// THE VERGE — MOBILE & WEB
Meet the people who want peptides to be made in America
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For some, the answer to a dodgy gray market is to bring the pharmaceutical supply chain back to American soil.
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This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. We’ll be taking a break next week and will be back on November 25th. Opt in for Optimizer here.
The SS Jeremiah O’Brien is a World War II Liberty ship. The hulking vessel was built in 56 days. It made 11 trips to Normandy, France, to supply the Allied powers in the fight against German U-boats. Last week, it was the site of a black-tie peptide party thrown by a trio of Gen Z venture capitalists.
Roughly 150 people attended the event, where four types of peptide samples were provided to guests — no injections. One was a topical cream with GHK-Cu, while the other three were dissolvable sublingual strips from peptide startup Afterglow. GHK-Cu is a popular skincare ingredient, but it’s unclear how well sublingual peptide strips work. The topic of the night wasn’t just the state of peptides. The venue was a deliberate reference to American industrial prowess — and why the pharmaceutical supply chain ought to be centered in the United States.
Sourcing is one of the biggest question marks with gray-market peptides — something the US Department of Health and Human Services is trying to address with its recent interim policy decision allowing certain unapproved peptides for compounding.