AI-Found BRP Peptide Rivals Ozempic Without Side Effects
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- Stanford Medicine researchers identified BRP, a peptide derived from the human gene BRINP2, that reduced appetite and body fat in animal studies while avoiding the nausea, constipation, and muscle loss linked to semaglutide (Ozempic).
- BRP acts specifically on the hypothalamus — the brain's appetite and metabolism center — through a different biological pathway than GLP-1 drugs, which also target the gut, pancreas, and other tissues.
- An AI tool called Peptide Predictor scanned all 20,000 human protein-coding genes, narrowed the list to 373 prohormones, and predicted 2,683 candidate peptides; testing 100 of them revealed BRP triggered a 10x stronger neuron response than GLP-1.
- In lean mice and minipigs, a single BRP injection cut food intake by up to 50% within an hour; in obese mice, 14 days of daily injections produced 3 grams of fat loss while untreated mice gained 3 grams, with no changes in movement, water intake, anxiety-like behavior, or digestion.
- Katrin Svensson, the senior author and Stanford assistant professor of pathology, has co-founded Merrifield Therapeutics and is listed as an inventor on BRP-related patents, with human clinical trials planned.
- The study was published in Nature with collaborators from UC Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the University of British Columbia, funded by the NIH, the American Heart Association, the Carlsberg Foundation, and others.
Why it matters: BRP activates a different brain pathway than semaglutide, and in animal studies it avoided the nausea, constipation, and muscle loss that limit Ozempic's tolerability — but the molecule has only been tested in mice and minipigs, and senior author Katrin Svensson holds patents on BRP and co-founded Merrifield Therapeutics to commercialize it.
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