Peptides and oligonucleotides: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Peptides and oligonucleotides are short chains of amino acids or nucleotides built step by step on solid supports. Costs are driven by protected building blocks, large volumes of solvent and specialised capacity, now stretched by demand for GLP-1 obesity drugs.
No public price Peptides and oligonucleotides has no public monthly price series: Made to order under private contracts; no public price index.What its price moves with
Peptides are built from protected amino acids, many of them specially modified. Protected derivatives cost far more than feed-grade amino acids, so the link to bulk amino acid prices is loose.
No public price for amino acids (lysine, methionine), so the link is explained in words only.Acetonitrile, the main washing and purification solvent in peptide and oligo making, is a by-product of acrylonitrile production. When acrylonitrile plants cut output in the 2008 to 2009 downturn, acetonitrile shortages hit peptide makers.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Many peptides and oligos are made by contract manufacturers, and GLP-1 demand has made peptide capacity a priority for CDMOs in India, China and Europe. Capacity tightness sets prices more than input costs do.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Most amino acids in peptides are single-handed chiral molecules, and unnatural versions are made by specialist building block suppliers. These high-value inputs add significantly to peptide costs, and their limited supplier base can delay large production runs.
No public price for chiral and specialty building blocks, so the link is explained in words only.Peptides and oligos are a growing alternative to small-molecule APIs, with GLP-1 drugs a leading example. They compete with small molecules for the same drug development budgets and plant investment.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.