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We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: Several members of the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee have industry connections or run pharmacies or clinics specializing in peptides. The group will meet later this month to discuss peptides. The FDA has listed its advisory members for the committee that will discuss peptides in late July. Owais Durrani, DO, an emergency medicine physician in Houston, previously wrote for Healio that \u201csome of the most transformative drugs in modern medicine are peptides,\u201d including insulin and semaglutide. While \u201cthe science of peptides is real, serious and worth pursuing,\u201d Durrani wrote, the current system is messy: \u201ca multi-billion-dollar market, a gray zone of unregulated suppliers, a regulatory system under political pressure, and real people spending real money on compounds that, for most of them, will produce nothing at all.\u201d
The FDA has named advisory members for the committee that will discuss peptides in late July. Image: Adobe Stock
New members and conflicts The Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee members now include Takyiah Stevenson, PharmD, as the designated federal officer and Gabriel Alizaidy, MD, MS; Asare B. Christian, MD, MPH, ABPMR, ABAARM; Timothy D. Fensky, RPh, DPh FACA; Robert Harshbarger, III, PharmD, FACA; Melissa Loseke, DO; Haleem Mohammed, MD, MBA; Gerald E. Morris, MD, MPH, ABOM; David D. Pope, PharmD; Elizabeth Rebello, RPh, MD, FASA, CPPS, CMQ; Brian Serumaga, PhD; Joshua Starbuck, MD, IFMCP; Kris Wusterhausen, DO; and the nonvoting industry representative Donnette D. Staas, PhD. But some have raised questions about several of the new committee members\u2019 potential conflicts of interest. According to reporting from the Associated Press, the new panel \u201cincludes more than a half-dozen panelists who run clinics, online businesses or pharmacies specializing in peptides.\u201d For example, Alizaidy, who has thousands of social media followers, charges $500 for \u201c\u2018peptide and hormone\u2019 consultations, including advice on \u2018where to safely get each peptide or compound,\u2019\u201d according to the AP. Additionally, Mohammad \u2014 chief medical officer at Gameday Men\u2019s Health \u2014 heads Florida clinics that sell injections of testosterone, vitamins and peptides, according to the AP. Notably, Harshbarger, a Republican state senator for Tennessee, \u201chas multiple connections to the industry,\u201d according to the AP. Harshbarger works as a pharmacist in a family business that sells compounded drugs for pain, longevity, weight loss and more. In 2025, his mother, pharmacist and U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tennessee, sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. \u201ccalling on him to relax FDA restrictions on a half-dozen peptides,\u201d according to the AP. Durrani told Healio that the timing of the new appointments was concerning. \u201cA month\u2019s notice ahead of a meeting that could reshape access to seven widely used peptides is a tight runway for the public, clinicians and even other committee members to properly vet the new panelists\u2019 backgrounds. Advisory committees work best when there\u2019s time for scrutiny before high-stakes votes, not after,\u201d he said. But he also said that the public should be concerned \u201cnot about any one individual so much as the pattern,\u201d because \u201cwhen a majority of new appointees have direct financial or clinical ties to peptide-selling businesses, that\u2019s a structural conflict-of-interest problem, not a personal one.\u201d \u201cThese aren\u2019t accusations of bad faith. It\u2019s the well-established reason FDA advisory panels are supposed to skew toward independent experts. The concerning part is what it signals about how this panel\u2019s composition was assembled relative to prior iterations, which leaned more heavily on university-based dermatology, anesthesiology and pharmacy compounding experts,\u201d Durrani said. \u201cThis is worth watching not just for peptides, specifically, but as a test case for how advisory committee composition and evidence review interact when there\u2019s public pressure from the top of HHS. The outcome here will likely set a template for future reviews.\u201d Kennedy has faced criticism for reshuffling other key committees. In June 2025, he removed all 17 members of a CDC advisory committee that is instrumental in developing federal vaccine recommendations. And in May 2026, Kennedy fired the chair and vice chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which creates clinical recommendations for preventive medicine. Future peptides discussion The committee will meet July 23-24 to discuss peptides. According to the FDA, the following peptides \u2014 in both free base and acetate forms \u2014 will be part of the conversation: BPC-157 for ulcerative colitis; emideltide for chronic insomnia, narcolepsy and opioid withdrawal; epitalon for insomnia; KPV for inflammatory conditions and wound healing; MOTs-C for osteoporosis and obesity; Semax for migraine, cerebral ischemia and trigeminal neuralgia; and TB-500 for wound healing. Durrani said that \u201cpeptides like BPC-157, TB-500, and similar compounds are being marketed well ahead of the evidence,\u201d considering that \u201cmost haven\u2019t been through controlled human trials, and FDA\u2019s own staff review reportedly found insufficient data to support their safety and efficacy for compounding.\u201d \u201cPrimary care physicians are going to get more questions from patients who\u2019ve seen these on social media or heard Secretary Kennedy discuss them personally,\u201d Durrani said. \u201cThe most useful thing a PCP can do is separate three very different buckets in the conversation: FDA-approved peptide drugs like semaglutide, peptides under active regulatory review like these seven, and gray-market \u2018research use only\u2019 products with zero oversight. Patients often don\u2019t realize those are three completely different risk profiles.\u201d For more information: Owais Durrani, DO, can be reached at primarycare@healio.com. 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