# Dosage in the Research Literature — BPC-157, TB-500, and Tβ4

> Doses, routes, and pharmacokinetics of BPC-157, the TB-500 fragment, and full-length thymosin beta-4 as they appear in the peer-reviewed literature. Research-context summary only. Not a recommendation.

## I. A note before the numbers

Neither BPC-157 nor TB-500 (nor full-length thymosin beta-4) is approved for human use by the FDA, the EMA, the MHRA, the TGA, or any other major regulatory authority. The FDA placed both BPC-157 and Tβ4 / TB-500 on its 503A Category 2 list of bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks in September 2023. WADA prohibits BPC-157 under category S0 and TB-500 / Tβ4 under category S2, both at all times. The numbers below are pulled from the peer-reviewed literature for the purpose of summarising what the research has actually studied. They are not a recommendation, not a protocol, and not a translation to human dosing. Most of them are rodent doses.

A second note specific to TB-500: the seven-amino-acid fragment marketed as TB-500 (Ac-LKKTETQ-OH) is not the molecule used in most of the cited Tβ4 studies. Where doses are quoted below from cardiac, corneal, dermal-wound, or Phase I intravenous work, those doses are for full-length forty-three-amino-acid Tβ4. The fragment has no published human pharmacokinetic study and no equivalent dose-finding data.

## II. BPC-157 — research doses

The dose that recurs across BPC-157 rodent work is 10 μg/kg or 10 ng/kg by intraperitoneal injection. Staresinic 2003 (Achilles transection in rats) used this pair [1]; Krivic 2006 (tendon-to-bone detachment in rats) used the same pair both intraperitoneally and intragastrically [3]; Brcic 2009 (crushed and transected muscle and tendon in rats) used the same intraperitoneally [4]; Matek 2025 (surgical quadriceps detachment in rats) used 10 μg/kg/day or 10 ng/kg/day in drinking water with an initial intragastric application [21]. Bajramagic 2024 summarised the dosing range across multiple rat intestinal-anastomosis models as 10 μg/kg or 10 ng/kg intraperitoneally, intragastrically, or in drinking water [8].

A central-nervous-system rat model used a higher dose: Perovic 2019 reported a single intraperitoneal injection of 200 μg/kg or 2 μg/kg at ten minutes post-injury in sacrocaudal spinal-cord compression [20a]. The 2025 ischemia-reperfusion study by Demirtas and colleagues used 20 μg/kg intraperitoneally in Wistar rats [26].

Drinking-water studies typically deliver BPC-157 at 0.16 μg/mL or 0.16 ng/mL in approximately twelve millilitres of water per rat per day. He and colleagues' 2022 pharmacokinetic study used 20–500 μg/kg in rats and 6–150 μg/kg in beagle dogs by single intramuscular dose, and proposed an extrapolated human pilot dose of 200 μg/person/day [5].

## III. BPC-157 — pharmacokinetics

From He and colleagues' 2022 study in Frontiers in Pharmacology: intramuscular bioavailability is approximately 14–19% in rats and 45–51% in dogs. Time-to-peak plasma concentration is approximately three minutes in rats and six to nine minutes in dogs. Plasma half-life is under thirty minutes in both species. Metabolism produces six small peptide fragments terminating in free amino acids, most notably proline, with urinary and biliary elimination [5].

BPC-157 is described across the literature as stable in gastric juice — a property attributed to the three consecutive prolines at sequence positions 3–5 — which is why peroral drinking-water administration is routinely used in rodent studies [20]. Oral bioavailability in humans has not been formally quantified.

## IV. TB-500 fragment and full-length Tβ4 — research doses

Preclinical Tβ4 (full-length) doses range from 0.5–12 mg/kg by intraperitoneal injection in rat stroke and dermal-wound models. Santra and colleagues' 2012 stroke study in Glia used 6 or 12 mg/kg intraperitoneally every three days for four weeks [17].

In the mouse cardiac work, Bock-Marquette and colleagues' 2004 Nature study used 150 μg systemic plus 400 ng intracardiac after coronary-artery ligation [9]. Smart and colleagues' 2007 work on epicardial progenitor mobilisation used 150 μg intraperitoneally in adult mice in vivo [10].

In the human Phase I intravenous study of recombinant Tβ4 (NL005, Wang 2021), single doses ran 0.05–25 μg/kg and multiple doses ran 0.5–5 μg/kg/day for ten days [14]. The corneal Phase II and Phase III work on RGN-259 used 0.01–0.1% topical ophthalmic solution dosed up to six times daily [11][13][14a]. The dermal-wound Phase II work used 0.01–0.1% topical gel once daily [12][16].

The seven-amino-acid TB-500 fragment as marketed has no published controlled human dose-finding study. Vendor labels of approximately 20 mg per vial of combined BPC-157 + TB-500 product are common in the research-supplier market and are not derived from any peer-reviewed combination dose-finding study; no such study exists [6][25].

## V. Tβ4 — pharmacokinetics

Wang and colleagues' 2021 Phase I in Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine reported dose-proportional pharmacokinetics for recombinant full-length Tβ4 by intravenous administration in healthy volunteers, with terminal half-life increasing at higher doses [14]. Reported terminal half-life in healthy human volunteers is on the order of one to two hours at therapeutic doses; the full molecule's lack of stable secondary structure in solution is thought to contribute to its protease resistance.

The TB-500 fragment's pharmacokinetics in humans are not published. The N-terminal acetylation of Ac-LKKTETQ-OH is intended to slow exopeptidase degradation. Whether the fragment's half-life matches, exceeds, or falls short of full-length Tβ4 at equivalent molar doses is not formally established.

## VI. Routes documented in the literature

For BPC-157, published routes include intraperitoneal injection, intragastric gavage, peroral administration in drinking water, subcutaneous and intramuscular injection, a 1 μg/g topical cream formulation, an intravenous infusion in the 2025 single-arm human pilot, intra-articular injection in the 2021 knee case series, and intravesicular instillation in the 2024 interstitial-cystitis pilot [6][20].

For TB-500 / Tβ4, published routes include intraperitoneal, subcutaneous, intravenous (Phase I and Phase II), intracardiac (preclinical), topical ophthalmic (Phase II and III) and topical dermal (Phase II wound trials) [9][11][12][13][14]. Intramuscular self-administration is the most commonly described research-supplier route but is not the route used in any of the cited clinical trials.

## VII. What the literature does not provide

It does not provide a peer-reviewed combination dose for BPC-157 + TB-500 [6][25][7]. It does not provide a human pharmacokinetic profile for the seven-amino-acid TB-500 fragment. It does not provide a controlled human dose-response trial for BPC-157 at any indication. It does not provide a long-term human safety record for either compound at any dose. The honest summary of the dosage literature is that BPC-157's rodent doses are well characterised, full-length Tβ4's Phase I/II/III ophthalmic and Phase I intravenous doses are well characterised, and everything else — including the entire commercial Wolverine-blend dosing market — sits beyond the edge of the published evidence.

## References

[1] Staresinic M, et al. Gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 accelerates healing of transected rat Achilles tendon. J Orthop Res. 2003;21(6):976-983.
[3] Krivic A, et al. Achilles detachment in rat and BPC 157. J Orthop Res. 2006;24(5):982-989.
[4] Brcic L, et al. BPC 157 angiogenesis modulation. J Physiol Pharmacol. 2009;60 Suppl 7:191-196.
[5] He L, et al. Pharmacokinetics of BPC 157 in rats and dogs. Front Pharmacol. 2022;13:1026182.
[6] McGuire FP, et al. Regeneration or Risk? A Narrative Review of BPC-157. Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med. 2025;18(12):611-619.
[7] Vasireddi N, et al. Emerging Use of BPC-157 — Systematic Review. HSS Journal. 2025.
[8] Bajramagic S, et al. BPC 157 and Intestinal Anastomoses Therapy in Rats. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2024;17(8):1081.
[9] Bock-Marquette I, et al. Thymosin beta4 — cardiac repair. Nature. 2004;432(7016):466-472.
[10] Smart N, et al. Thymosin β4 — epicardial progenitor mobilization. Nature. 2007;445(7124):177-182.
[11] Sosne G, et al. Thymosin beta 4 — corneal wound healing. Clin Ophthalmol. 2007;1(3):201-207.
[12] Guarnera G, et al. Thymosin beta-4 and venous ulcers. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2007;1112:407-412.
[13] Sosne G, Dunn SP, Kim C. Thymosin β4 — Phase 2 dry eye. Cornea. 2015;34(5):491-496.
[14] Wang T, et al. Phase I recombinant human thymosin β4. J Cell Mol Med. 2021;25(18):8698-8708.
[14a] Sosne G, Kim C, Kleinman HK. 0.1% RGN-259 — Phase III Neurotrophic Keratopathy. IJMS. 2023;24(1):554.
[16] Kleinman HK, Sosne G. Thymosin β4 Promotes Dermal Healing. Vitamins and Hormones. 2016;102:251-275.
[17] Santra M, et al. Thymosin β4 oligodendrocyte differentiation. Glia. 2012;60(12):1826-1838.
[20] Jozwiak M, et al. Multifunctionality of BPC 157. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2025;18(2):185.
[20a] Perovic D, et al. BPC 157 in spinal cord injury rats. J Orthop Surg Res. 2019;14(1):199.
[21] Matek D, et al. BPC 157 in rat quadriceps reattachment. Pharmaceutics. 2025;17(1):119.
[25] McGuire FP, et al. Regeneration or Risk? — combination commentary. Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med. 2025;18(12):611-619.
[26] Demirtas H, et al. Protective Effects of BPC 157 on Liver/Kidney/Lung. Medicina (Kaunas). 2025;61(2):291.

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