“Research use only” is not a third approval pathway
RUO is a seller label. It is not a third kind of approval.
People talk as if there were three green lights: approved, compounded, and “research use only.” There are not. The third one is a label a seller put on a listing. It is not a pathway a regulator opened.
Approved means a specific product got a decision from a regulator. Compounded means a pharmacy made a preparation under compounding law, for an identified patient, when the ingredients are allowed. A committee vote does not finish that second path. See three kinds of peptides.
Research-use-only, not for human consumption, and similar lines are how a listing is sold. They do not make the thing an approved drug. They do not make it lawful to compound. They do not make a black-market copy of a trial drug into a consumer product.
Lilly’s August 12, 2026 statement on retatrutide: not approved anywhere, cannot be sold to consumers, cannot be lawfully compounded. That is the example. See Retatrutide is not approved anywhere.
Peptide Vault logs what you already decided to track. It does not sell any of the three, and it does not treat a website label as a status.
Citations
Peptide Vault is a personal log and research library. Not medical advice, not a pharmacy, not a shop. We do not tell you what to take, how to mix it, or where to get it. No dosing. No where-to-buy. No mix tutorials. No heal/optimize claims.