What is a peptide, anyway?

There's a huge trend right now around peptides. People are putting them on their skin. People are injecting them. You've got NAD, you've got the GLP-1 injectables, and most people don't even realise the “P” in GLP-1 stands for peptide. Glucagon-like peptide-1.

So before we talk about what we do at Elcella, I want to start at the beginning. What actually is a peptide?

A peptide is a short chain of amino acids. Your body uses them as messengers. Little signals that tell your cells what to do. Some of the most important ones live in your gut.

 

Your gut is full of peptides, you just can't get to them

Deep in your lower gut, in the colon, there are special cells called L cells. These L cells produce two peptides that matter enormously when it comes to appetite: GLP-1 and PYY. We call them gut hormones, or gut peptides, or satiety hormones. They all mean the same thing. Their job is to signal to your brain that you're full.

Here's the part most people don't know. Everyone has these peptides. Lean, overweight, obese, it doesn't matter your size. We all have the same number of L cells. We all have the same capacity to produce these peptides. We all have the blueprint.

The problem is, for many people, those peptides are locked away inside the L cells. They're stuck. They can't get out and do their job. So the signal to the brain never properly fires, and the “I'm full” message never lands.

If you're someone who's lean and eating a good fibre-rich diet, your L cells are probably releasing those peptides nicely. If you're overweight, obese, or struggling with your gut-brain signalling, those peptides are likely sitting there, locked in. We've spent over a decade at Queen Mary University of London figuring out why, and what to do about it.

Read our paper!

 

The injectable peptides, and why they come with side effects

This is where modern pharma has tried to take a shortcut. The injectables everyone is talking about, Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, are synthetic versions of GLP-1 (and in the case of Mounjaro, GLP-1 combined with another gut hormone called GIP). Lab-made copies of hormones your body already produces. Instead of helping your own peptides come out, you're being given a foreign version.

It works, in the sense that people can lose weight. But it's no surprise so many people on these drugs feel nauseous, get gastrointestinal side effects, feel unwell. Your body is trying to tell you something. This foreign molecule isn't what I was designed to process. The nausea, the gut issues, that's the body's way of rejecting something it doesn't recognise.

And there's a bigger problem with the injectable approach. It's a plaster. The moment you stop, the weight comes back. Studies have shown that around two-thirds of the weight is regained within a year of stopping. Wilding JPH. Et al, 2022

Why? Because nothing fundamental has changed. The root cause was never addressed. Your own gut peptides are still locked away inside your L cells, exactly as they were before you started injecting. You haven't fixed the underlying problem. You've just been propping the system up from the outside. As soon as you remove the prop, the body rebounds, because the original signalling problem was never solved.

Yes, GLP-1 injectables can reduce food noise while you're on them. That's well established. But again, the moment you stop, the food noise comes back, the appetite comes back, the weight comes back. You haven't taught your body anything. You've just been overriding it.

Read about the differences between Elcella and GLP-1 Injections

 

What we do differently at Elcella

When you release your own natural peptides, your endogenous peptides, your body doesn't reject them. Of course it doesn't. They're yours. You don't get the side effects you get with something synthetic.

That's the whole idea behind Elcella. We're not putting a foreign peptide into your body. We're activating the ones you already have, naturally. 

Elcella is the only company in the world that can release both of your endogenous gut peptides, GLP-1 and PYY. Not one. Both. No injectable, no supplement, no pharma product anywhere has been able to do this. Instead of trying to copy these peptides in a lab, we unlock the ones already sitting in your gut.

Dr Madusha and I have spent over a decade at Queen Mary University of London developing a patented formulation, the right blend of medium and long-chain fatty acids, that's able to unlock those L cells. Once unlocked, your L-cells release your own GLP-1 and PYY at the level they were always meant to. Those peptides travel to the appetite centres in your brain, and you feel full. Naturally. The way you were designed to.

 

Everyone has the blueprint

This is the part I want people to hear most.

It doesn't matter what your size is. You haven't been let down by your biology. You have the same L cells as everyone else. You have the same peptides locked inside them. You have the same capacity to release them and feel full.

What's been missing is the keys.

That's what we've built. A way to unlock what's already there.

We genuinely believe everything starts in the gut. The gut is the master regulator of appetite. And the peptides you need are already inside you. Ready, waiting, locked away. All we're doing is helping them out.