TL;DR

Interest in oral peptides and peptide gummies comes from two forces, according to Tesseract Life Sciences CMO Ulli Lindauer: many consumers do not want to inject themselves, and people want enjoyable sensory formats like gummies, drinks, chewables and melts. CEO Will West calls this a carrot and a stick, and adds that the gummy market shows a format can be appealing yet deliver nothing, so peptide gummies have to be truly functional.

• Peptides have historically been available only as injectables, which Ulli Lindauer describes as a real hurdle for many consumers, herself included.
• Consumers want sensory experiences such as flavor, scent and texture, which is why gummies, powdered drinks, chewables and melts have taken over many traditional nutraceutical categories.
• Peptides became a mainstream topic after the introduction of GLP-1s, and many GLP-1 products are now available as oral peptides rather than injections.
• Will West describes the shift as a carrot and a stick: the stick drives people away from injectables, and the carrot pulls them toward something sweet and appealing.
• The existing gummy market shows that consumers can take gummies and get nothing out of them, so peptide gummies have to be truly functional.
• Tesseract’s focus is the translation from injectable to other forms, using powders that can go into many formats besides gummies.

Why are consumers moving away from injectable peptides?

Ulli Lindauer: There are two main sentiments at work here. The first one is that historically and traditionally, peptides have only been available as injectables, which for many consumers, me being one of them, is a real hurdle for using peptides. You’re interested in the benefits and you want to experience these effects. For many people, it’s a health conversation, not a wellness conversation. You do not appreciate the idea of injecting yourself. That’s a very big hurdle for many people.

Why do consumers want gummies, drinks and melts?

Ulli Lindauer: The second one is more a desire. People desire sensorial experiences when taking a product. They’re looking for flavor, scent, texture, for the feeling of chewing something or drinking something that gives them a pleasing experience in addition to just swallowing a capsule really quickly.

That’s why things like gummies or powdered drinks, chewables and melts have really taken over a lot of traditionally nutraceutical categories, which is quite exciting because consumers are looking for a whole bouquet of benefits. They’re looking for the benefits of what they’re taking. They want to take it with the least amount of disruption and pain, and they want to enjoy it: the flavor, the taste, the fragrance. Is it a bubbly powder? That’s why these specific aspects are now starting to be layered into the peptide conversation.

How did GLP-1s make oral peptides a mainstream topic?

Ulli Lindauer: Peptides have become a very large topic ever since the introduction of GLP-1s. It’s become a mainstream topic. And you can already see that a lot of the GLP-1 products are now available as oral peptides rather than as the injection, because people gravitate away from hurting themselves.

What does the gummy market teach the peptide industry?

Will West: Ulli and I went to business school together, and we spent a lot of time reading cases. The purpose of that was to learn lessons that prior business experiences should have taught us and other executives. You don’t have to look any further than the existing gummy market and what it’s already taught the supplement industry about nutraceuticals and vitamins and how consumers are already using gummies. It proves exactly Ulli’s point.

But one of the things that it proves is that people have been using gummies because they’re almost candy. And they tend to forget sometimes that you can consume these gummies and get absolutely nothing out of them.

Why must peptide gummies be functional, not just appealing?

Will West: What we’re doing is trying to make that translation from an injectable, regardless of what you think of peptides, because the gummy is meant to be just another form factor. As Ulli points out, there are a lot of things driving that, and you want it to be a fantastic experience.

It’s both a carrot and a stick. The stick is driving people away from injectables. The carrot is pulling them towards something sweet and savory and appealing and sensorial so that they arrive at something they really want anyhow, but it has to be truly functional. What we know from the existing supplement and nutraceutical industry is that a lot of product in that market is not really serving any valuable purpose. So we have to make sure in the peptide space we can make that translation in a way that serves the peptide and therefore the patient or the consumer very well. That’s part of the challenge.

There’s a lot of appeal from the user or the patient’s point of view. But from the businesses involved, there’s a lot of attention going to it because it has to be very functional. It’s a different type of attention. It’s not the consumer “give it to me, I want it” kind of attention. It’s the scientific: we really need to get this right. We absolutely have to nail this from an ingredient, a product, a quality, a manufacturing and a translational platform point of view, which in Tesseract’s case is very much what we’re focused on.

At the same time, that translational point of view should then allow us to take the powders that we’re making as we work on this translation and put them in a lot of things other than gummies.

Edited for length and clarity from a recorded conversation with Ulli Lindauer and Will West.