The story

In 1982 two teams found GHRH at the same time. Roger Guillemin's group in La Jolla and Jean Rivier and Wylie Vale at the Salk Institute pulled it out of pancreatic tumours that had made two patients grow acromegalic. Guillemin, a French-born scientist, had already won the Nobel Prize for finding the other hypothalamic hormones. Researchers then learned that the first 29 amino acids did everything the full peptide did, and that short form became sermorelin, sold for years as Geref by Serono. It was used to test and treat children's growth and later became a staple of adult anti-ageing medicine because it restores the body's own growth hormone pulse instead of replacing it.