Summary
Nothing in this knowledge base has a single legal status. Each compound has a status in each jurisdiction, on a date, established from a named register or instrument, and those statuses diverge sharply: semaglutide is the active substance of medicines authorised in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States 123, while no marketing authorisation for BPC-157 was found in the MHRA substance index or the EU Union Register, and FDA's own December 2025 survey reported no approved product containing it in any country 456.
This hub explains the three archetypes that organise those differences, what the phrase "research use only" does and does not signify, how each compound page renders its dated rows, and how often the underlying sources are re-read. The four framework pages below carry the detail for each jurisdiction and for anti-doping.
The three archetypes
The archetype is a description of how a compound currently sits in the regulatory system, not a judgement about it. Every compound page states which archetype applies and why.
Active substance of a licensed medicine
A compound in this archetype is the active substance of at least one product holding a current authorisation in a tracked jurisdiction. Semaglutide is authorised in Great Britain as Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy, all held by Novo Nordisk Limited 178, centrally in the EU under three marketing authorisations dating from 2018, 2020 and 2022 2910, and in the US under NDA 209637 and three further applications 3. Tirzepatide is authorised as Mounjaro in Great Britain and centrally in the EU since 15 September 2022, and in the US as Mounjaro and Zepbound 111213.
The archetype does not travel with the molecule. Tesamorelin acetate is the active ingredient of a licensed US biological product under BLA 022505, first approved on 10 November 2010 14; the EU centralised application was withdrawn on 21 June 2012 15; and MHRA products and eMC searches for tesamorelin returned no result on 21 September 2026 1617. One compound, three different answers.
Investigational or unlicensed
Here no current authorisation was found in any tracked jurisdiction. Retatrutide is in clinical development and the MHRA stated on 24 October 2025 that it "has not been approved for UK use" 18; Drugs@FDA returned no match and FDA states that retatrutide is not a component of an FDA-approved drug 1920. CJC-1295, ipamorelin, BPC-157 and TB-500 sit in the same archetype on the searches recorded in their dossiers 2122423.
Regulatory history does not change the archetype either. Sermorelin acetate was approved in the US as Geref under NDA 019863 in 1990 and NDA 020443 in 1997, approval of both was withdrawn at the holder's request effective 18 June 2009, and FDA determined in 2013 that neither was withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness 242526. Because no current authorisation exists anywhere, sermorelin is presented under this archetype with its licensed history stated in the regulatory rows.
Cosmetic or biochemical ingredient
The only regulatory identity found for GHK-Cu is as a cosmetic ingredient: COPPER TRIPEPTIDE-1 is listed in the European Commission CosIng database with the function skin conditioning 27, and the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel published a safety assessment of the tripeptide-1 group with a final report dated 30 June 2014 28. No Drugs@FDA application was found for prezatide copper 29. A cosmetics listing is an information record, not an authorisation, and the medicines frameworks still apply to any product presented as a medicine 27.
What "research use only" means, and what it does not
No regulator retrieved for this knowledge base confers a status called "research use only". The medicines frameworks work the other way round: in the United Kingdom, regulation 46 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 provides that a person "may not sell or supply, or offer to sell or supply, an unauthorised medicinal product" 30, and in the European Union Article 6(1) of Directive 2001/83/EC provides that no medicinal product may be placed on the market of a Member State unless a marketing authorisation has been issued 31. Whether a given article is a medicinal product turns on how it is presented and what it is used for, not on a label.
Two regulators have addressed the phrase directly. FDA states that it has warned companies selling unapproved semaglutide falsely labelled "for research purposes" or "not for human consumption" 32, and records the same practice for tirzepatide 33. MHRA stated in October 2025 that products claiming to contain retatrutide are, outside authorised clinical trials, "likely to be illegal" 18. A research-use label therefore describes an intended laboratory application; it is not a regulatory classification, and it does not alter the status recorded in the rows on each compound page.
Nothing on this site states whether any particular act of supply is lawful. That is a question for the regulator and for legal advice, and the framework pages are written to describe instruments and registers rather than to apply them.
How each compound page renders its status
Regulatory rows are never typed into an article. Each monograph renders <RegulatoryStatus compound="slug" />, which reads the rows imported from that compound's research dossier. Every row carries four things: the jurisdiction (UK, EU, US or WADA), one factual sentence, the detail behind it, and the date on which the sources were checked.
A negative result is recorded as a finding in its own right. "No entry for ipamorelin was found in the EU Union Register of medicinal products for human use on 21 September 2026" names the register and the date, and the same dossier records that a control search for macimorelin returned an entry, which shows the search was resolving active-substance names at the time 34. An absence established this way is not converted into a statement that a substance is banned, and limitations are carried rather than hidden: several dossiers record that the EMA website returned a bot-verification page and that Commission registers were read instead 3536.
Re-check cadence
These pages are re-checked quarterly, and immediately when a cited source is known to have changed. The cadence is set by how fast the sources move. FDA's 503A category document was updated on 14 May 2026 and records an entry removed on 22 April 2026 and reinstated after a clarification on 5 May 2026 37. The WADA Prohibited List is replaced annually: the 2026 List was approved on 11 September 2025 and came into force on 1 January 2026 38. Each article carries a last-reviewed date, and each row carries its own checked-on date, so a reader can see exactly how old a given finding is.
The four framework pages
- UK framework: the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, prescription-only classification, the GB cosmetics regulation, and how the MHRA products register and the eMC were searched.
- EU framework: centralised and national authorisation, the Union Register, the orphan register, EPARs and withdrawals, and CosIng.
- US framework: approval and compounding: Drugs@FDA, the Orange Book, the 503A nomination categories, the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, and the GLP-1 shortage timeline.
- WADA Prohibited List and Monitoring Program: the structure of the 2026 List, the class wording for S0, S2.2.3, S2.2.4 and S2.3, and the Monitoring Program.