From last night’s Chromadex (Nicotinamide Riboside “NR” (FAQs) (Reviews)) earnings call:

Frank L. Jaksch Jr. — Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board

“In addition, a study entitled “Combined Metabolic Activators Improves Cognitive Function in Alzheimer’s Disease” was published in the pre-print server medRxiv.

The study was led by Dr. Adil Mardinoglu from the Royal Institute of Technology and King’s College London.

This is the first study to investigate the effects of combined metabolic activator supplementation in Alzheimer’s patients.

This study demonstrated that supplementation with the same combination of metabolic activators used in the COVID 19 study including NR significantly improve cognitive function in markers of liver and kidney health and moderate to severe Alzheimer’s patients — suggesting this may be an effective therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer’s disease.

Further studies are needed to build on and validate these initial findings and we are waiting for the study to be peer-reviewed before sharing these results more broadly”

Mitchell Pinheiro — Sturdivant — Analyst

“And another question is just around the studies.

The most recent study that Alzheimer’s disease — the conclusions there were relatively meaningful and I think impactful to some people that those that who get a chance to read it.

And so that study seemed to me to have — you can’t make claims of that I don’t think. But it seems more — it seems bigger in usefulness to you.

And are there — are you designing these studies to have more impact rather than on the nitty-gritty science studies where they’re looking at a particular aspect of something.

It seemed like the Alzheimer’s disease is something more that you should be looking at, not the disease by itself but others.

Are you able to formulate better studies so you can use them more effectively in your messaging?”

Robert Fried — Chief Executive Officer

“So remember we have this program that we call the CERP program where we work with researchers to design their study and we supply the ingredient, but we do not finance the study.

And then as part of that program, if there is any intellectual property that comes from it it’s licensed back to ChromaDex.

And with that program, we’ve been able to get perhaps $75 million, maybe $100 million worth of research to the Company without us putting up that money.

But the downside is it’s their study.

We can influence it — but we can’t design it.

So mostly for studies that we’re not financing it’s not our call.

But it is conceivable in the future that we might design some studies that specifically lead to (health) claims or areas that we think are opportunistic.

For example we think inflammation is a particularly interesting area for Nicotinamide Riboside (NR).

We think that we’re seeing a fairly consistent level of studies that show results indicating a reduction of certain important inflammation markers.

So we can see designing studies around that knowing that that is a likely expected outcome that might enable us to strengthen our marketing claims and target a specific audience.

With regard to Alzheimer’s, we agree with you.

We think that Alzheimer’s — there are many related diseases, autoimmune diseases or neurological conditions that we think are relevant when you elevate NAD or elevate PARP functionality to improve mitochondrial function.

Many disease states — obviously, you know, the obvious complications when you’re marketing specifically to a disease — but cognition in general we think is a very, very important area for this product.

We think we understand mechanistically why it would improve cognition levels not just reduction of inflammation.

But there are other things we’ve shown that it breaks the blood-brain barrier and elevates NAD.

So yes, we do see — we are opportunistic about pursuing specific studies and perhaps applying dollars for specific research that we think will yield the result and enable us to explain — expand our claims.

But before I get off that question, let me give Frank Jacksch if you’re — would you like a chance to take a shot at that question too?”

Frank L. Jaksch Jr. — Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board

“Well, you’ve done such a good job in answering it already.

But yeah just to layer in on it, I mean the one positive at least from this Alzheimer’s study, and you’re right, I mean Alzheimer’s is good in the sense that it does go to cognition like Rob said.

I mean, in reality in order to make a claim or use the study to support a claim it would have to be something more along the lines of mild cognitive impairment as the primary outcome, whether we’re looking for enrolling people with that rather than Alzheimer’s.

But you need to look at — do these studies in things like Alzheimer’s to really root out those mechanisms.

In this case, their primary focus was around improving mitochondrial function — that mitochondrial function seems to play a central role in Alzheimer’s and progression of Alzheimer’s.

And then we can utilize that to build awareness around the importance of it there as we go after other studies which are underway.

If you look at ClinicalTrials.gov you’ll find the mild cognitive impairment types studies that are out there”

More on NR for Alzheimer’s:

Twitter: @RaisingNAD