Abstract
The significance of cytoprotection and adaptive cytoprotection and the peptides importance remained to be not completely determined. BPC 157 is an anti-ulcer peptidergic agent, proven in clinical trials to be both safe in inflammatory bowel disease (PL-10, PLD-116, PL 14736) and wound healing, and stable in human gastric juice, with no toxicity being reported. It has a prominent effect on alcohol- lesions (i.e., induced acutely and chronically) and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs-lesions (while interestingly BPC 157 may both prevent and reverse adjuvant arthritis). To review the importance of BPC 157, this review focused on Roberts cytoprotection concept described in rat stomach, reviewing our evidence that may resolve whether the cytoprotection and adaptive cytoprotection is an uniform phenomenon or not; whether the phenomenon or phenomena are endogenous or not, depending on nature of the irritants (mild or strong); whether this may contribute to stomach mucosa defense either when threaten by various ulcerogens or afforded by various antiulcer agents; whether these phenomena are uniform in whole gastrointestinal tract or not; whether they are interrelated or not. Finally, the importance of the cytoprotection phenomena and cytoprotection activity for skin wound healing, and wound healing in general was challenged. Thereby, this review focused on BPC 157 role in cytoprotection and adaptative cytoprotection suggesting that it may be the essential endogenous mediator able to mediate both cytoprotective and adaptive cytoprotective response in stomach and the whole gastrointestinal tract with significant importance in wound healing as well.
Keywords: Cytoprotection, adaptive cytoprotection, stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157