Over the past year, significant advances have been achieved through the use of phage-displayed peptide libraries. A wide variety of bioactive molecules, including antibodies, receptors and enzymes, have selected high-affinity and/or highly-specific peptide ligands from a number of different types of peptide library. The demonstrated therapeutic potential of some of these peptides, as well as new insights into protein structure and function that peptide ligands have provided, highlight the progress made within this rapidly-expanding field.