From discovery to research.
A defining year in peptide science. An enduring inspiration.
77 marks a defining year in peptide science. In 1977, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized discoveries in brain peptide hormones and the methods used to measure them. 77 Peptides carries that scientific lineage forward — from discovery to research.
Behind that recognition lay three decades of relentless work. Andrew Schally and Roger Guillemin, working in rival laboratories on opposite coasts, spent years isolating minuscule amounts of peptide factors from millions of sheep and pig hypothalami. What they found rewrote biology: the hypothalamus — a walnut-sized structure at the base of the brain — regulates the body's entire hormonal orchestra by releasing its own small peptides, which in turn signal the pituitary gland below it.
Rosalyn Yalow's contribution made all of it measurable. The radioimmunoassay she developed with Solomon Berson turned antibodies into detection instruments, allowing researchers to quantify insulin and other peptide hormones in trace amounts. Nearly every hormone study of the following half-century, and the clinical assays still used in laboratories today, rests on that foundation.
It was also the beginning of peptides as research subjects in their own right. Once the sequences of TRH, GnRH and somatostatin were known, chemists could synthesize analogs, study structure–activity relationships, and explore how a change of a single amino acid alters a peptide's behavior — the logic that still drives peptide research today, from receptor-selective agonists to multi-research-target molecules.
Hypothalamic peptides isolated
TRH (thyrotropin-releasing hormone) and GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) were independently isolated and characterized by the Guillemin and Schally laboratories — the first proof that the brain issues chemical commands through small peptides.
Radioimmunoassay
Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson developed the radioimmunoassay (RIA), making it possible to measure peptide hormones in blood at previously unimaginable concentrations — down to picomolar levels.
Somatostatin discovered
Somatostatin, the growth-hormone-inhibiting peptide, was identified — a 14-amino-acid peptide that became a template for an entire class of regulatory molecules studied across metabolism, endocrinology and growth research.
The Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally for their discoveries of peptide hormone production in the brain, and to Rosalyn Yalow for the radioimmunoassay of peptide hormones.
The modern era
Solid-phase peptide synthesis, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry give researchers tools of purity and precision that scientists of 1977 could only have imagined.
77 Peptides takes its name from that turning point. We supply research-grade peptides for the laboratory community, with third-party testing, verified purity and careful handling standards — carrying a scientific lineage forward, one experiment at a time.
