Unregulated compound
This has no approved use in people anywhere in the EU, and is sold as a research chemical. Nobody checks what is in the vial, how pure it is, or how much it contains. Peptide Reader describes what the evidence says — it is not a suggestion to use it.
Gray market
KPV
Also known as KPV peptide · Lys-Pro-Val · lysine-proline-valine · alpha-MSH (11-13) · α-MSH(11-13) · alpha-MSH 11-13 · MSH(11-13) · C-terminal tripeptide of alpha-MSH · KPV free base · KPV acetate · H-Lys-Pro-Val-OH · Lys-Pro-Val-NH2 (as used on some supplier pages) · CAS 67727-97-3 · PubChem CID 125672 · KPV tripeptide · melanocortin tripeptide
Only tested on animals
3 of 51 peptides sit at this level
- Category
- Gray market
- Doping status
- Banned in sport
- Sources
- 17
- Chain length
- 3 amino acids
KPV is three amino acids — lysine, proline and valine — the tail end of a natural body hormone called alpha-MSH. It is sold online and through compounding clinics for gut inflammation, skin conditions and healing, as a cream, a capsule, a nasal spray and an injection. No published study has ever given it to a person. In an evaluation dated 12 May 2026 the US Food and Drug Administration searched the medical literature, the trial registries, its own side-effect database and its food and supplement complaint system, and reported that it found nothing: no clinical study, no measurement of what a human body does with it by any route, and no side-effect reports either. What exists is mouse and rat bowel-inflammation experiments, one rabbit eye study, and cells in dishes.
KPVWhat it is
What it is
A three-amino-acid peptide — lysine, proline and valine — written KPV. It is the tail end of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH), a 13-amino-acid hormone the body makes itself; UniProt records alpha-MSH as residues 138–150 of the precursor protein pro-opiomelanocortin (P01189). KPV is therefore a fragment, not the hormone. The nomination to the US regulator was ambiguous between two different substances, the uncapped free acid and its acetate salt, and the FDA evaluated both; the acid is H-Lys-Pro-Val-OH (C16H30N4O4, 342.43 g/mol, CAS 67727-97-3, PubChem CID 125672). Inside alpha-MSH the last valine carries an amide cap, so the natural fragment and the sold one are not chemically identical. It is marketed online and through telemedicine clinics as a cream, a capsule, a nasal spray and an injection, on its own and blended with BPC-157, TB-500, AOD-9604 and Follistatin-344.
How it is sold, and whether it is legal
- Sold as
- Sold as a cream or gel, a capsule, a nasal spray and an injection. The only product a US pharmacy sought permission to make was a 0.1 per cent cream or gel for the skin. There is no approved way to take it, and the single published experiment on donated human skin in the laboratory found no detectable passage through intact skin — KPV only crossed after the skin was punctured with tiny needles or driven through by an electric current.
- Legal status in the EU
- Not approved as a medicine in the EU, the United States or anywhere else. There is no monograph for KPV in the United States Pharmacopeia and National Formulary, the European Pharmacopoeia (11.8, 2025) or the Japanese Pharmacopoeia (18th edition), and when the FDA checked in 2026 the European Medicines Agency listed no authorised product containing it. In the United States it cannot legally be made up by a pharmacy either: a compounding pharmacy nominated it for the section 503A bulk drug substances list, withdrew the nomination, and the FDA finished the assessment anyway and proposed not adding either the free base or the acetate. It does not appear in any of the three categories of the FDA's nominated-substances list updated 14 May 2026. KPV is not named on the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2026 Prohibited List, but section S0 of that list prohibits at all times any pharmacological substance with no current approval by any governmental health authority for human therapeutic use, which is what KPV is.
What it does in your body
6 parts of the body · 4 only seen in animals, 2 only seen in a dish
In mice, KPV is carried into the cells lining the gut through PepT1 — a doorway that normally lets short pieces of digested protein through, barely open in a healthy large bowel and opened up when the bowel is inflamed — and once inside it damps down NF-κB, the master switch a cell uses to turn on its inflammation genes. What it does not appear to do is act on the receptors of the hormone it comes from: it cannot displace labelled alpha-MSH from those receptors in rat brain tissue, mouse melanoma cells or mouse macrophages, it does not raise the internal messenger those receptors use, blocking two of them does not stop its anti-inflammatory effect, and the effect survives in mice whose main pigment receptor does not work. The FDA states the consequence plainly in its 2026 evaluation: the molecular target underlying KPV's effects is unknown.
- The lining of the gut
- This is the main thing it is sold for, and it is where the animal work is strongest. Mice were given a chemical in their drinking water that strips and inflames the lining of the large bowel. Mice that also got KPV in the water lost less weight, recovered earlier, and had less damage under the microscope than mice given the chemical alone. The peptide gets into the cells of the gut lining through a doorway called PepT1 — the same doorway that lets short pieces of digested protein through — and once inside it damps down the master switch a cell uses to turn on its inflammation genes. That doorway is barely open in a healthy large bowel and opens up when the bowel is inflamed, which is why researchers were interested in the first place.
- Two different mouse models of bowel inflammation, five and ten mice per group, KPV in the drinking water; the longer of the two experiments ran eight days. In human gut cells grown in a dish the effect showed up at concentrations of a few billionths of a mole per litre — a vanishingly small amount. No person has ever been given it in a published study.
- Only seen in animals
- Source [01]Source [02]Source [03]
- The surface of the eye
- Rabbits had the whole outer skin of the cornea scraped off both eyes. Drops containing KPV were put in four times a day for four days, and the raw area was photographed and measured every twelve hours. It closed faster than in rabbits given salt water. When the researchers first gave a drug that blocks the body from making nitric oxide — a short-lived gas cells use to signal to each other — the KPV effect went away, which is the only clue anyone has published about how it works here.
- Rabbits, both eyes injured, measured every twelve hours for four days; eight corneas were in the KPV group and the paper's abstract does not say how many were in the salt-water group. The authors say plainly that they do not know whether this reflects something the whole alpha-MSH hormone does. Nothing like it has been tried on a human eye.
- Only seen in animals
- Source [05]
- White blood cells arriving at an inflamed area
- Mice were given an injection into the belly cavity that draws in a flood of the white blood cells that handle acute inflammation. Mice treated with KPV had fewer of those cells arrive than untreated mice. The same experiment also showed what KPV does not do: in a dish it failed to stop scavenger cells releasing their inflammatory signals, while the whole alpha-MSH hormone stopped them. So the tail fragment is not simply a smaller version of the hormone — it does a narrower job by a route nobody has identified.
- Mice given crystals or an inflammatory signal protein in the belly cavity, with KPV given into the body rather than at the site. The paper reports the comparison against untreated animals as statistically significant but prints no cell counts in its abstract.
- Only seen in animals
- Source [04]
- The pigment switch — where it does not act
- The hormone KPV comes from is the one that darkens skin, so the obvious question is whether the fragment does that too. The published answer is no, and the reason is that it does not appear to touch the hormone's receptors at all. KPV could not push labelled alpha-MSH off those receptors in rat brain tissue, mouse melanoma cells or mouse scavenger cells; it did not trigger the internal messenger those receptors normally trigger; blocking two of the receptors did not stop its anti-inflammatory effect; and the effect still happened in mice whose main pigment receptor does not work. The FDA's reviewers draw the conclusion out loud: the molecular target behind KPV's effects is unknown.
- Four separate binding and signalling experiments plus two whole-animal experiments, summarised by the FDA in its evaluation dated 12 May 2026. Every one of them is in a rodent or a dish.
- Only seen in animals
- Source [01]Source [04]
- Skin, when a cream is rubbed on it
- The product a pharmacy asked permission to make was a 0.1 per cent cream. The one experiment that has tested whether KPV can cross human skin found that, left to soak in on its own, none of it got through — the amount on the far side stayed below what the instrument could detect. It only crossed when the skin was first punctured with tiny needles or an electric current was used to push it. The FDA notes both sides of that: skin this tight probably keeps KPV out of the bloodstream, and it also keeps it out of the layers of skin a cream is supposed to reach.
- Donated human skin mounted in a laboratory diffusion cell, not a living person. Three delivery methods compared against plain soaking. Nothing has been measured in anybody's actual skin.
- Only seen in a dish, not in a body
- Source [01]Source [07]
- Skin cells under stress from air pollution
- Human skin cells grown in a dish were exposed to fine airborne dust, which killed some of them and made the survivors pump out an inflammatory signal. Adding KPV to the dish brought both back towards normal. The work was repeated in a small lab-grown block of layered skin cells. This is the nearest thing to published support for the cosmetic claims made for KPV, and it is a dish.
- Human keratinocytes in culture and a three-dimensional lab skin model, one KPV concentration reported. The lead author's affiliation is a company research institute, and the paper's own closing sentence points at applications in functional cosmetics.
- Only seen in a dish, not in a body
- Source [13]
What changed when it was measured
6 findings · 5 only seen in animals, 1 only seen in a dish
There is no published study in which KPV has been given to a human being, by any route. In an evaluation dated 12 May 2026, prepared for the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting of 23–24 July 2026, the FDA searched PubMed, Embase, ClinicalTrials.gov, DailyMed and Drugs@FDA and reported that it identified no clinical study of KPV in humans, no measurement of what a human body does with it by any route, and no adverse-event report in either its medicines database (searched through 3 December 2025) or its food, supplement and cosmetics complaint system (searched back to 2004). The nomination it assessed cited nine references, and the FDA notes that none of them was a study of KPV in people. A ClinicalTrials.gov API search on 3 August 2026 returned totalCount 0 for the exact phrase "KPV", for KPV unquoted, and for "lysine-proline-valine". What does exist is animal and dish work: mice with chemically induced bowel inflammation lost less weight and had less bowel damage on KPV than mice given the same chemical alone (Dalmasso 2008, Kannengiesser 2008); rabbits whose corneas had been scraped bare healed faster, with all eight KPV-treated corneas closed at 60 hours against none of the salt-water controls (Bonfiglio 2006); and in mice with colitis-driven bowel cancer, KPV prevented the tumours in normal animals and did nothing at all in animals bred without the PepT1 transporter (Viennois 2016). The chemistry carries its own caveat. The one-letter code KPV describes the free acid the FDA evaluated and suppliers list, but it is not the same molecule as the corresponding piece of alpha-MSH, which is amidated; the FDA's own footnote points at a supplier page titled "Lys-Pro-Val-NH2/KPV Acetate Salt" that carries the free acid's CAS number. FDA concluded that neither KPV form is well characterised, and proposed not adding either to the list of substances pharmacies may compound from.
Nothing has been timed in a person, because no person has been given it in a published study. The FDA reports that it found no measurement of what a human body does with KPV — how fast it is absorbed, where it goes, how long it lasts — by any route. The only timings that exist are in animals and in glassware. Rabbits with a scraped cornea were given drops four times a day and their eyes had closed over by sixty hours. Mice with an inflamed bowel drank the peptide in their water for eight days. In laboratory glassware KPV is fragile: under acid, alkaline or oxidising conditions it falls apart, and one of the pieces it turns into is a closed ring formed from its first two amino acids. Researchers who wanted to test it in the bowel had to build gels and nanoparticles to carry it, because a plain solution given into the rectum is described in their own papers as very unstable.
- Whether a scraped rabbit cornea had grown its surface back
- Sixty hours after the injury, all eight corneas treated with KPV had closed completely, and none of the corneas treated with plain salt water had. The gap was large enough that chance is an unlikely explanation (p < 0.05).
- Rabbits with the entire outer layer of the cornea rubbed off both eyes, eight corneas in the KPV group, drops four times a day for four days; the abstract does not give the size of the salt-water group
- Only seen in animals
- Source [05]
- Weight and bowel damage during mouse colitis
- Mice given KPV recovered earlier and regained significantly more body weight than mice given the same bowel-damaging chemical without it. Inflammatory cells in the bowel wall were significantly reduced, and so was an enzyme released by those cells. The paper's abstract prints no percentages, so how big any of these gaps were cannot be read out of it.
- Mice with chemically induced or immune-cell-transfer bowel inflammation, across two papers; one gives group sizes of five and ten over up to eight days, the other's abstract gives no numbers at all
- Only seen in animals
- Source [02]Source [03]
- Bowel tumours in mice with long-running gut inflammation
- In ordinary mice, KPV stopped the tumours forming that the inflammation would otherwise have produced. In mice bred without the gut doorway KPV travels through, it produced none of that effect — the tumours came anyway. The whole result therefore depends on that one transporter, which is a fact about mouse biology and has not been checked in a person.
- Mice given a cancer-causing chemical plus repeated bowel inflammation, compared with mice bred without the PepT1 transporter
- Only seen in animals
- Source [06]
- White blood cells arriving in the belly cavity after an inflammatory injection
- Fewer arrived in mice given KPV than in mice given the inflammatory injection alone, by a margin the authors report as statistically significant. The reduction was not blocked by a drug that blocks two of the alpha-MSH receptors, and it still happened in mice whose main pigment receptor does not work — so whatever produced it, it was not those receptors.
- Mice with crystal-induced or signal-protein-induced inflammation of the belly cavity; no counts are given in the paper's abstract
- Only seen in animals
- Source [04]
- Deaths among mice with a non-working pigment receptor during severe colitis
- The authors write that KPV treatment rescued every animal in the treated group from death. Their abstract gives no group sizes and no death rate for the comparison group, so the size of the difference cannot be read out of it — only the direction.
- Mice bred with a non-functioning MC1 receptor, given a bowel-damaging chemical; numbers not stated in the abstract
- Only seen in animals
- Source [03]
- How much KPV crossed a piece of human skin
- Left to soak in the way a cream would, none could be detected on the far side at all — below the instrument's floor of 0.01 micrograms per millilitre. Puncturing the skin with tiny needles first got a measurable amount through. Adding an electric current pushed roughly eight times more through than the needles alone, and doing both together roughly thirty-five times more.
- Donated human skin in a laboratory diffusion cell — not a living person, and not a living blood supply
- Only seen in a dish, not in a body
- Source [07]
What can go wrong
4 effects
There is no human safety data at all for KPV, by any route. The FDA's side-effect reporting system held no reports for it when searched through 3 December 2025, and its food, supplement and cosmetics complaint system held no case going back to 2004; an empty database measures how few people file reports about something bought online, not safety. In animals the standard toxicology is simply absent: the FDA searched for acute toxicity, repeat-dose toxicity, genetic toxicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity and carcinogenicity studies of KPV and reported that none exist in any species. Nothing has been published on whether the body makes antibodies against it, or on whether it clumps in the container — the FDA raises both, notes that peptides as short as two amino acids have been shown to clump, and states that clumping makes an immune reaction more likely. Product quality is unverified: the FDA found no certificate of analysis at all for the free base in the nomination and only purity figures in the ones circulating online, with no impurity identities, no clumping test and no microbiological testing, which is required for anything meant to go on skin. An analysis of a different peptide sold by online sellers without a prescription (Ashraf et al., J Med Internet Res 2024) measured purity of 7.7–14.37 per cent against a promised 99 per cent and found bacterial toxin in all three samples.
- Any side effect at all, in a person
- The FDA searched its own side-effect reporting system through 3 December 2025 and retrieved no reports mentioning KPV. It separately searched the complaint system covering food, supplements and cosmetics, back to 2004, and found no case where KPV had been given to anyone. It states in the same document that the potential safety risks of using KPV in humans are unknown. An empty database is not the same finding as a safe substance — it is a measurement of how few people file reports about something bought online.
- Not measured. No published study has given KPV to a human being by any route, so there is no rate to quote for anything.
- Source [01]
- An immune reaction to the peptide itself
- Peptides injected or absorbed can prompt the body to make antibodies against them, and the FDA writes that the consequences range from antibodies causing no symptoms at all to reactions it calls life-threatening. It adds a second concern specific to this substance: even peptides only two amino acids long have been shown to clump, clumping makes an immune reaction more likely, and none of the paperwork filed for KPV tested for it. Because KPV is a copy of a piece of a hormone the body makes itself, antibodies raised against it could in principle also attack the natural one — the FDA names this risk generally, and nobody has tested for it here.
- Not measured. No study in people has looked at whether the body makes antibodies against KPV, or whether it clumps together in the vial.
- Source [01]
- Whatever else is in the powder
- The FDA looked for the certificates that are supposed to say what is in a batch. For the plain form of KPV there was none in the application at all, and the ones it found elsewhere online reported a purity figure and nothing else — no limits on impurities, no check for clumping, no microbial testing, which is required for anything meant to go on skin. The salt form did come with a fuller certificate, but the FDA notes it still names none of the individual impurities. The way short peptides are built leaves behind truncated and misassembled versions that closely resemble the real thing. Researchers once ordered vials of a different peptide from online sellers without a prescription: three arrived, their measured purity was between 7.7 and 14.37 per cent against the 99 per cent promised, and bacterial toxin was present in all three.
- Not measured for KPV. Nobody has published an analysis of what the vials and jars people actually buy contain.
- Source [01]Source [14]
- Anything that takes months or years to show up
- There is no study of what a single large dose does, none of what repeated dosing does over time, none testing whether it damages DNA, none in pregnancy or in developing animals, and none testing whether it causes cancer. Those five headings are printed in the FDA's evaluation and every one of them is empty. The gap matters more than usual here, because the one thing KPV has been shown to do in animals is turn inflammation down — and inflammation is part of how a body notices an infection or a tumour.
- Not measured, in any species. The FDA searched for animal safety studies and reported that none of the standard ones exist.
- Source [01]
What people report
What follows is what people say online. It is not evidence, it is not graded, and it is not checked by anyone. People who had a bad time and people who are selling something both post more than people for whom nothing happened. It is here because you would go and read it anyway, and knowing who is talking is better than not.
People tell the regulator it fixed something nothing else touched
One writer describes two and a half years of a whole-body inflammatory illness, a Mayo Clinic workup, two operations, eighteen sessions of physiotherapy and a list of prescription drugs that did nothing, then says five days of KPV taken by mouth substantially resolved the muscle and tendon tightness. Another says an entire skydiving community — more than forty people he knows personally — uses it on the grazes you get from a hard parachute landing, and reports less scarring and faster closure. That second writer says in his own comment that this is community observation and not clinical data.
Read in The FDA's public comment file for the July 2026 compounding meeting, docket FDA-2025-N-6895; comments FDA-2025-N-6895-0024 and FDA-2025-N-6895-0199, posted April and July 2026
What the published studies say
There is nothing to check either account against. The FDA searched the published literature, the trial registries and its own databases and found no study in which KPV had been given to a human being, and no side-effect report either. And the only experiment on KPV and human skin found that none of it crossed intact skin at all without needles or an electric current.
It is almost never talked about on its own
In the comment file KPV usually appears as one name in a list — BPC-157, TB-500, KPV, MOTS-c, DSIP, Semax, Epitalon — with a single sentence of support covering all seven. One commenter goes further and recommends pairing it with MOTS-c specifically to blunt a histamine reaction the other peptide is said to cause. Almost nobody writes about what KPV alone did, on its own, over a defined period.
Read in Docket FDA-2025-N-6895: 192 of the 2,641 comments mention KPV, and the great majority list it alongside the six other peptides on the same agenda (read 3 August 2026)
What the published studies say
The FDA's evaluation records that KPV is also marketed as a compounded blend with BPC-157, TB-500, AOD-9604 and Follistatin-344, sold as a regenerative combination. No published study has tested KPV together with any of them, in any species.
The people writing are the people who want to keep buying it
Many of the comments are a sentence long and say only some version of approve it, we need these peptides. Others are filed under categories the docket itself labels as drug industry or drug association. The comment period closed the day before the meeting that would decide whether pharmacies may keep making it, so the file is a campaign as much as it is a set of accounts.
Read in Docket FDA-2025-N-6895, 2,641 comments, most of them posted in the four weeks around the 23–24 July 2026 meeting
What the published studies say
The FDA's own recommendation in the same docket runs the other way: it proposed not adding either form of KPV to the list pharmacies may compound from, on the grounds that the substance is not well characterised and that there is no information at all on its use in humans.
Where to read it yourself
- The FDA's public comment file on compounded peptides, docket FDA-2025-N-6895
Public comments sent to a regulator
The public docket opened for the 23–24 July 2026 compounding advisory meeting. It holds 2,641 comments, mostly written by patients, clinicians and compounding pharmacies during 2026, and KPV is named in many of them. This register could not open the docket search itself to count them, so no count is printed here. Anyone can open and read any of them.
It is a lobbying surface, not a record of outcomes. Almost everyone writing wants continued access, several comments are filed under industry and trade-association categories, and nobody who tried KPV and felt nothing has any reason to write in. Nothing in it is verified by anyone, and a first-person account of a symptom improving after five days is not a measurement.
- FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) and the food and supplement complaint system
Official side-effect reports
The United States regulator's public record of side effects reported for medicines, plus its separate complaint system for food, supplements and cosmetics. The FDA searched both for KPV — the first through 3 December 2025, the second back to 2004 — and retrieved nothing in either.
Nothing there is not the same as nothing happening. Reporting is voluntary, the system is built around prescribed medicines, and a person rubbing on a cream bought through an online consultation has no doctor filing a form for them. The FDA notes in the same document that compounders generally do not report adverse events to it at all. An empty result measures the reporting system, not the peptide.
What nobody has measured
15 unknowns
- Whether anything measured in a mouse, a rat or a rabbit also happens in a person — no published study has given KPV to a human being, by any route.
- What a human body does with it: there is no measurement of how much is absorbed, where it goes or how long it lasts, from mouth, nose, needle or skin.
- Whether a cream can work at all, given that in the one skin experiment no detectable amount crossed intact human skin without tiny needles or an electric current.
- What it actually binds to — the receptors of the hormone it comes from have been ruled out, and no replacement target has been identified.
- Whether the gut results carry over, since in mice the whole effect vanished when the transporter that carries it into gut cells was removed.
- Whether it does anything for the conditions people buy it for — psoriasis, eczema, mast cell problems, Lyme disease, long COVID, mould illness — none of which has been studied in any species.
- What repeated use does over months: no repeat-dose toxicity study of KPV exists in any species.
- Whether it damages DNA: no genetic toxicity study of KPV exists.
- What it does in pregnancy or to a developing animal: no developmental or reproductive study of KPV exists.
- Whether it causes or feeds cancer: no animal carcinogenicity study of KPV exists, and the one thing it reliably does in animals is turn inflammation down.
- Whether the body makes antibodies against it, and whether those antibodies could also attack the natural hormone fragment the body makes itself.
- What is in the jar or vial people buy, since the certificates the FDA found reported a purity number and no impurity identities, no clumping test and no microbial testing.
- Whether the powder sold is the uncapped free acid or the amide form found inside the hormone — the FDA found the two names used interchangeably by suppliers.
- What happens when it is taken with BPC-157, TB-500, AOD-9604 or Follistatin-344, which is how it is often sold and how it has never been studied.
- How many people are using it and what is happening to them — the US regulator's side-effect database held no reports for KPV when it was searched in December 2025.
Questions people ask
8 questions
- Does KPV actually work?
- Nobody knows, because it has never been tested in people. In May 2026 the US Food and Drug Administration searched the published literature, ClinicalTrials.gov, DailyMed and its own databases and found no study in which KPV had been given to a human being for anything. What supporters point to is mice with inflamed bowels, rabbits with scraped corneas and cells in dishes. Those results are real and mostly positive, and they are also the same kind of evidence that has failed to carry over into people many times before.
- Source [01]Source [11]
- Does KPV heal the gut?
- It has healed the gut of mice, repeatedly, in several laboratories, and that is where the evidence stops. Mice given a chemical that inflames the large bowel lost less weight and had less damage when KPV was added to their drinking water, and the effect depended entirely on a transporter in the gut wall called PepT1 — take that transporter away and KPV does nothing. No study has ever measured it in a person with colitis, Crohn's disease or any other gut condition. Researchers who wanted to test it in the bowel had to build gels and nanoparticles to carry it, because a plain solution given into the rectum is described in their own papers as very unstable.
- Source [02]Source [06]Source [15]Source [16]
- KPV vs BPC-157 — what is the difference?
- They are sold for overlapping things and often in the same bottle, but they sit on different rungs of this register. BPC-157 has at least been given to people: five small published studies covering 116 people in total, none longer than two weeks. KPV has never been given to a person in any published study at all, which is why it grades one level lower here. Both were assessed by the same FDA advisory process in July 2026, and the FDA's reviewers recommended against both.
- Source [01]Source [17]
- Is KPV legal?
- It is not an approved medicine anywhere. It has no monograph in the European, Japanese or United States pharmacopoeias, and the European Medicines Agency lists no authorised product containing it. In the United States a compounding pharmacy asked for permission to make it into a cream, then withdrew the request; the FDA finished the assessment anyway and proposed not allowing it. For athletes it is banned: it is not named on the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2026 list, but section S0 of that list prohibits at all times any substance with no current approval from any national health authority, which is exactly what KPV is.
- Source [01]Source [10]Source [12]
- What are the side effects of KPV?
- Unknown, and that is the honest answer rather than a cautious one. There is no published human study to count side effects in, the FDA's side-effect database held no reports for KPV when it was searched in December 2025, and its food and supplement complaint system held none either going back to 2004. In animals there is no repeat-dose toxicity study, no test for DNA damage, no pregnancy study and no cancer study — the FDA prints those headings in its evaluation and each one is empty. People who say KPV has no side effects are describing an absence of measurement.
- Source [01]
- Can you buy KPV, and what are you getting?
- It is sold online and through telemedicine clinics as a cream, a capsule, a nasal spray and an injection, on its own and blended with other peptides. What you are getting is harder to answer than it should be. KPV is a nickname, not an official drug name, and the FDA found that the name is used for more than one substance: the free acid and its acetate salt are different active ingredients, and at least one supplier page it cites is titled with the amide form while carrying the free acid's registry number. The FDA's conclusion is that KPV is not well characterised, and no US outsourcing facility reported making it between 2017 and mid-2025.
- Source [01]
- Will KPV tan my skin, the way the tanning peptides do?
- No, and that is the whole point of using the fragment instead of the hormone. KPV is the last three amino acids of alpha-MSH, the hormone that tells skin cells to make pigment, but the pigment-making part of that hormone sits elsewhere in the chain. In test after test KPV failed to bind the hormone's receptors, failed to switch on the internal messenger they use, and kept working in mice whose main pigment receptor is broken. The trade-off is that nobody knows what it does bind to instead — the FDA writes that the molecular target behind its effects is unknown.
- Source [01]Source [04]Source [08]
- Is KPV the same thing as alpha-MSH?
- No. Alpha-MSH is thirteen amino acids long; KPV is the last three of them, sold on their own. There is also a small chemical difference that sellers rarely mention: inside the hormone that final valine is capped with an amide, while the KPV that was nominated to the FDA and sold as a powder is the uncapped free acid. The two are not the same molecule, and the register prints the sequence for the uncapped form because that is what the registry number, the formula and the certificates describe.
- Source [01]Source [08]Source [09]
Amino acid sequence
3 amino acids
Each letter represents one amino acid.
- Length
- 3 amino acids
Sources
17 sources
- [01]FDA Evaluation of KPV-Related Bulk Drug Substances (KPV (free base) and KPV acetate), dated 12 May 2026, in the briefing document for the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting of 23–24 July 2026 (2026)
- [02]Dalmasso G et al. PepT1-mediated tripeptide KPV uptake reduces intestinal inflammation. Gastroenterology 2008;134(1):166-178 (2008)
- [03]Kannengiesser K et al. Melanocortin-derived tripeptide KPV has anti-inflammatory potential in murine models of inflammatory bowel disease. Inflamm Bowel Dis 2008;14(3):324-31 (2008)
- [04]Getting SJ, Schiöth HB, Perretti M. Dissection of the anti-inflammatory effect of the core and C-terminal (KPV) alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone peptides. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 2003;306(2):631-7 (2003)
- [05]Bonfiglio V et al. Effects of the COOH-terminal tripeptide alpha-MSH(11-13) on corneal epithelial wound healing: role of nitric oxide. Exp Eye Res 2006;83(6):1366-72 (2006)
- [06]Viennois E et al. Critical role of PepT1 in promoting colitis-associated cancer and therapeutic benefits of the anti-inflammatory PepT1-mediated tripeptide KPV in a murine model. Cell Mol Gastroenterol Hepatol 2016;2(3):340-357 (2016)
- [07]Pawar K et al. Transdermal iontophoretic delivery of lysine-proline-valine (KPV) peptide across microporated human skin. J Pharm Sci 2017;106(7):1814-1820 (no detectable passage by passive diffusion, limit of detection 0.01 µg/mL) (2017)
- [08]UniProt P01189 — human pro-opiomelanocortin; alpha-MSH is residues 138–150, with N-acetylserine at 138 and a valine amide at 150
- [09]PubChem CID 125672 — Lys-Pro-Val, also indexed as alpha-MSH (11-13): C16H30N4O4, 342.43 g/mol, IUPAC name ending in methylbutanoic acid, which is the free acid
- [10]WADA: World Anti-Doping Code International Standard – Prohibited List 2026, section S0 non-approved substances, page 4 (KPV, melanocortin, melanocyte and MSH appear nowhere in the document) (2026)
- [11]ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, exact-phrase search for "KPV": totalCount 0 (checked 3 August 2026; unquoted KPV and quoted "lysine-proline-valine" also return 0)
- [12]FDA: Bulk Drug Substances Nominated for Use in Compounding Under Section 503A, updated 14 May 2026 (KPV appears in none of the three categories) (2026)
- [13]Sung J et al. Lysine-proline-valine peptide mitigates fine dust-induced keratinocyte apoptosis and inflammation by regulating oxidative stress and modulating the MAPK/NF-κB pathway. Tissue Cell 2025;95:102837 (2025)
- [14]Ashraf AR et al. Multifactor quality and safety analysis of semaglutide products sold by online sellers without a prescription. J Med Internet Res 2024;26:e65440 (2024)
- [15]Sun J et al. Self-cross-linked hydrogel of cysteamine-grafted γ-polyglutamic acid stabilized tripeptide KPV for alleviating TNBS-induced ulcerative colitis in rats. ACS Biomater Sci Eng 2021;7(10):4859-4869 (2021)
- [16]Xiao B et al. Orally targeted delivery of tripeptide KPV via hyaluronic acid-functionalized nanoparticles efficiently alleviates ulcerative colitis. Mol Ther 2017;25(7):1628-1640 (2017)
- [17]FDA Briefing Document for BPC-157-Related Bulk Drug Substances, Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, 23–24 July 2026 (2026)
Immunity & inflammation · Tissue & healing · Skin
16 peptides · strongest evidence first
- Approved medicinePT-141Approved for low sexual desire that causes distress, in women who have not been through the menopause.Therapeutic13 sources
- Approved medicineSetmelanotideApproved for obesity caused by hypothalamic damage, Bardet-Biedl syndrome or three named gene faults — not for ordinary obesity.Therapeutic14 sources
- Approved medicineThymosin alpha-1Approved in Italy only as a helper for flu vaccination in adults with a weak immune system, and promoted far more widely for immunity, inflammation, long COVID and ageing.Therapeutic13 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyAcetyl hexapeptide-8Sold in skincare for expression lines and wrinkles.Skincare8 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyAOD-9604Promoted for fat loss, and increasingly for joints, cartilage and anti-ageing.Gray market17 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyBPC-157Promoted for injury recovery, tendon healing and gut problems.Gray market10 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyCollagen peptides (hydrolysed collagen)Sold as a supplement for skin, hair, bones and joints.Supplement4 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyGHK-Cu (copper tripeptide-1)Sold in skincare for wrinkles, skin repair and hair growth.Skincare6 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyLL-37Sold online for infections, wound healing and gut problems; a peptide the body makes itself.Gray market17 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyMelanotan IISold online as a tanning injection, and separately as something that produces erections.Gray market21 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyPalmitoyl pentapeptide-4Sold in anti-wrinkle skincare.Skincare5 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyPalmitoyl tetrapeptide-7Sold in skincare blends for wrinkles and irritated-looking skin.Skincare4 sources
- Tested in people, but barelyPalmitoyl tripeptide-1Sold in skincare to support collagen and soften wrinkles.Skincare4 sources
- Only tested on animalsKPVThis oneSold for gut inflammation, skin conditions and wound healing.Gray market12 sources
- Only tested on animalsTB-500Promoted for injury healing and recovery.Gray market7 sources
- No real evidence at allAcetyl tetrapeptide-5Sold in eye creams for puffiness and dark circles.Skincare5 sources