Robert Fried

What was it about NAD and ultimately NR that caught your interest?

The telomere research is interesting, but it never crossed over into something that was actually actionable or therapeutic.

Same is true with sirtuins.

The research around sirtuins was always questionable, is even to this day.

The idea behind sirtuins is simply that if a mammal restricts its caloric intake, we've shown, there was a study in 1923 at Cornell that showed that when a mammal restricts its caloric intake, it lives longer.

So they tried to replicate that with a molecule, and it's the sirtuins that are activated, so they thought sirtuins are longevity genes.

So there was an attempt to try to replicate that caloric restriction, mimic caloric restriction, as they say.

And they thought they had found one in a molecule found in the skin of red grapes called resveratrol.

They thought resveratrol would mimic caloric restriction and activate the sirtuin genes and extend lifespan.

It turns out it's not the case.

It doesn't mimic caloric restriction, it doesn't activate sirtuins, and probably sirtuins do not really even extend life.

But the idea of it was exciting enough that people were interested in it and invested in it.

It wasn't until... So after that failed, people said, well, why did that fail?

And one theory was, well, maybe...

to actually activate these sirtuin genes, you need lots of NAD.

So the idea of NAD was well known, this idea that to activate a gene, this energizer, this coenzyme called NAD has to be high.

So there are all these experiments starting like in 2010 to show, well, what if I try to activate sirtuins by combining resveratrol with NAD?

some NAD enhancer like NR.

It turns out that you don't need the resveratrol at all.

Just elevating NAD activates the sirtuin genes.