STAT is co-publishing this investigation by Undark.
In the spring of 2024, Flynn McGuire started to notice glowing references online to an unapproved drug that proponents claimed could help the body heal more quickly. McGuire is a chief medical resident at University of Utah Health, where he works with patients rehabilitating from cancer and injuries, but he had never heard of the substance, called BPC-157. Colleagues he consulted hadn’t heard of it either. So he decided to conduct a formal review of the scientific literature in his field. “I wanted to see if there was anything to it or not,” he said.
