In their new research, the scientists fed the NAD precursor nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) to mice that were equivalent in age to an 80-year-old person. They also gave it to mice whose DNA had been damaged by radiation. The compound boosted NAD back to youthful levels and restored their ability to repair the DNA damage in both the old and irradiated cells. Sinclair said, “The cells of the old mice were indistinguishable from the young mice, after just one week of treatment.” In addition, dosing astronauts traveling to Mars with NMN could counteract the damage that radiation in deep space would cause them. In an earlier experiment by Sinclair and his associates, the muscles of two-year-old mice fed NMN resembled those of six-month-old mice with respect to insulin resistance, inflammation, muscle wasting, and other important markers. Sinclair says that his group plans to launch human NMN trials in the next six months.

Other groups have already started and completed safety trials of other NAD precursors in human beings. Leonard Guarente, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Glenn Laboratory for the Science of Aging, reported the results in December of a clinical trial involving 120 people who took the NAD precursor nicotinimide riboside (NR). The trial found that subjects experienced no serious adverse events. The participants ranged in age from 60 to 80 years old and took it for eight weeks.

The researchers report that NAD “levels increased from baseline in whole blood by an average of 40 percent at four weeks and maintained that increase for the duration of the trial.” These results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal soon. Guarente is the co-founder the startup Elysium Health, selling NR pills at $50 per month as a nutraceutical that is “designed to support well-being at the cellular level.”*