🩺 Category
Endocrine & Clinical Peptides
Established prescription peptide medicines that regulate hormone secretion, fluid balance, and bleeding — including somatostatin and vasopressin analogs used in hospitals and clinics worldwide.
Established prescription peptide medicines that regulate hormone secretion, fluid balance, and bleeding — including somatostatin and vasopressin analogs used in hospitals and clinics worldwide.
This category collects established, FDA-approved peptide medicines that don't fit the fitness-and-wellness goals of the other groups but are among the most important peptide drugs in real clinical use. Their common thread is regulation — of hormone secretion, water balance, or blood flow — through two natural signaling systems.
The somatostatin analogs (octreotide, lanreotide, pasireotide) mimic the body's hormonal "off switch" to control conditions of hormone excess like acromegaly and to treat neuroendocrine tumors. The vasopressin analogs (desmopressin, vasopressin itself, and terlipressin) act on the antidiuretic-hormone system to manage water balance, bedwetting, bleeding disorders, and the circulatory complications of critical illness and liver disease. Unlike much of this encyclopedia, every peptide here is a prescription medicine backed by clinical trials.
A long-acting synthetic analog of the natural hormone somatostatin, FDA-approved to suppress excess hormone secretion in acromegaly, carcinoid syndrome, and certain neuroendocrine tumors.
Read the guide →A long-acting somatostatin analog closely related to octreotide, FDA-approved for acromegaly and for slowing progression of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.
Read the guide →A newer, broad-spectrum somatostatin analog that binds more receptor subtypes than octreotide, FDA-approved for Cushing's disease and for acromegaly not controlled by other therapy.
Read the guide →A synthetic analog of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, FDA-approved for central diabetes insipidus, bedwetting, and certain bleeding disorders — with the water-retaining effect but not the blood-pressure effect of the natural hormone.
Read the guide →The body's own antidiuretic hormone — a nine-amino-acid peptide that controls water balance and constricts blood vessels — also used as an intravenous medicine to raise blood pressure in shock.
Read the guide →A long-acting vasopressin analog used in advanced liver disease — FDA-approved for hepatorenal syndrome and widely used for bleeding esophageal varices — that constricts splanchnic blood vessels.
Read the guide →A long-acting prodrug of parathyroid hormone (PTH), FDA-approved as Yorvipath for adults with hypoparathyroidism — the first therapy designed to provide steady, around-the-clock PTH replacement.
Read the guide →This category exists to hold major approved peptide medicines that do not fit the wellness-oriented categories elsewhere on the site. Nearly all of them belong to two hormone families.
Somatostatin analogs. Somatostatin is the body's general inhibitory hormone — it switches off the release of growth hormone, insulin, glucagon, gastrin and more — but it is destroyed within minutes. Octreotide, lanreotide and pasireotide reproduce its effects in long-acting form. They are used in acromegaly, carcinoid syndrome and neuroendocrine tumours, where the problem is a gland or tumour producing too much of something. Their differences come down to receptor selectivity: the older two target mainly SSTR2, while pasireotide reaches SSTR5 as well, which is what lets it treat Cushing's disease — at the cost of a marked tendency to raise blood sugar.
Vasopressin analogs. Vasopressin does two things: it makes the kidneys retain water, and it constricts blood vessels. Each analog isolates one of those. Desmopressin keeps the water effect and drops the pressor effect, for diabetes insipidus, bedwetting and certain bleeding disorders. Terlipressin leans the other way, constricting the gut circulation in advanced liver disease. Vasopressin itself is used in intensive care for shock.
Palopegteriparatide sits slightly apart — a long-acting parathyroid hormone prodrug approved in 2024 for hypoparathyroidism.
These are not compounds anyone buys online, and none of them has a wellness market. Their value on a peptide reference site is that they demonstrate what peptide medicine looks like when it works.
Every drug here went through the full process. Randomized trials in defined patient populations, regulatory review, labeled indications, characterized side effects, and post-marketing surveillance. When we describe octreotide's gallstone risk or pasireotide's effect on blood sugar, those figures come from trial data and labeling — not from mechanism plus inference.
They show the receptor-selectivity principle in action. The clearest lesson in this category is how much a small structural change matters. Desmopressin differs from vasopressin by two modifications, and the result is a drug that can be taken by a child at home rather than infused in an ICU. That is the whole promise of peptide engineering, demonstrated rather than asserted.
They set the standard of comparison. When an unapproved research peptide is described as "a peptide, just like the approved ones", this category is the appropriate reply. Octreotide has been in clinical use since the 1980s with decades of documented outcomes. That is what the approved tier means, and it is a different category of knowledge from an animal study.
See the FDA-approved peptide drugs list and the approval timeline for the full set.
Somatostatin analogs like octreotide, lanreotide, and pasireotide suppress excess hormone secretion. They are used for acromegaly (growth-hormone excess), for hormone-secreting and other neuroendocrine tumors, and — for octreotide — in settings like variceal bleeding. Pasireotide is also used for Cushing's disease.
Both act on the antidiuretic-hormone system, but desmopressin is engineered to keep the water-retaining (V2) effect while dropping the blood-pressure-raising (V1) effect of natural vasopressin. That makes desmopressin ideal for diabetes insipidus and bedwetting, while vasopressin's vasoconstriction is used in shock.
Yes. Every peptide in this category is an FDA-approved, prescription-only medicine used under medical supervision — a contrast with the unapproved 'research chemicals' found in several other categories on this site.
They are major clinical peptide drugs whose uses — controlling hormone excess, water balance, and bleeding — don't map onto the wellness-oriented goals (weight loss, muscle, cognition, and so on) of the other categories. Grouping them keeps the A–Z list genuinely complete.