For millions of consumers who will go on to pay for full-body scans, biomarker workups, and consultations with longevity clinics, the first step on that journey will be a dietary supplement. They might first reach for something as mundane as Centrum Silver, but the next sequence of steps will quickly take them to the supplement micro-category that is defining how supplement consumers view longevity.
NAD⁺ precursors are the longevity supplement, and the consumers who buy them are the target audience for the whole longevity industry.
These consumers have bought into the arcane science of NAD, a trend proven by hundreds of millions of dollars spent on products that are built on scientific claims but largely rely on faith to drive continuing purchases.
The success is undeniable. Niagen Biosciences saw sales of its nicotinamide riboside grow from $99.6 million in fiscal year 2024 to $129.42 million in fiscal year 2025. Net income more than doubled. Add a vast constellation of companies selling an alternative precursor, nicotinamide mononucleotide, and supplement industry insiders estimate a market that tops $400 million in the US alone.
Still, longevity for longevity supplements is far from assured, and keeping the hot ingredient hot holds lessons for longevity categories and services far beyond the aisles at Vitamin Shoppe.
The NAD⁺ precursor products are designed to counter what the brands claim is an inescapable decline of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, a coenzyme vital to mitochondrial activity and the function of every cell in the human body. Scientists believe NAD declining with age leads to poor cellular health, and that boosting NAD⁺ via the precursors NR and NMN supports a healthy response to various diseases associated with aging. The full coenzyme cannot enter cells, but the precursors are able to support production of NAD. NR and NMN operate on similar pathways, but there is disagreement on which is more effective and at what dose.
Consumers by the millions accepted that concept, led by marketing from Elysium Health and Niagen Biosciences. NAD⁺ precursors have seen explosive growth.
How long consumers stay on board for a supplement with little promise of immediate and experiential results is the question that could define the nutrition sector of the longevity industry.
Niagen Biosciences is answering that question with both science and innovation. The innovation comes in products like its Tru Niagen Beauty skin cream and an IV product administered in high-end wellness spas. The company now offers at-home injection kits. The science comes in studies that Niagen claims supports their thesis and specific benefits.
But the brand’s director of regulatory and science, Andrew Shao, says his more-studies wish list is lengthy. “There are gaps,” he says, calling for larger long-term studies that would show tangible and documented benefits across a period of years. He places Niagen’s nicotinamide riboside in a state of discovery similar to where vitamin D was two decades ago before a groundswell of advocacy that followed a wave of research made it shorthand for good health across a variety of conditions. “Can the general population in the long term benefit from optimizing NAD⁺ status? I believe the answer is unequivocally, yes. But we don't necessarily have the data that demonstrates that.”
More science will be what will help Niagen’s Tru Niagen product escape the fate of resveratrol, the hot healthy aging ingredient of the 2000s that quickly faded out of the next-big-thing limelight, says Niagen Biosciences CEO Rob Fried. “You have to keep publishing studies that show a result. We can't stop learning. We can't stop doing the research,” Fried says.
For resveratrol, the sales stopped because the science stopped, he contends. “Resveratrol just hit a brick wall because nothing was positive. Nothing is always positive, but you need enough positive [findings] to keep it going. Other than oxidation, resveratrol really never came up with anything.”
Sustainable science
Not everybody is as convinced of the long scientific runway Fried and Shao describe. Joshua Cornelius, co-creator of the longevity app Huuman Life, credits Niagen for “putting more real human research behind NR than anyone in the category,” but he is not sure it’s the right science. That it raises NAD⁺ levels in the blood is not meaningful until it delivers a longevity outcome, he contends. “It remains pretty thin when it comes to what that actually buys you.
"The way I read the data, most of what goes past raising NAD⁺ is still preliminary, or just a biomarker, not something you feel.”
Innovation is not the answer, Cornelius says. Science builds the runway: “The ones that burn out keep innovating on the label instead of on the evidence.”
Ashish Suthar developed a BluNADBooster ingredient that he claims works with the precursors to support the body’s ability to benefit from higher NAD⁺ levels, and he too wants more science. While the decline of NAD⁺ with age and the ability of NMN and NR to raise it is now “well established,” Suthar believes not enough of the benefits are as well known. “What's far less settled is what that increase actually does: tissue-specific uptake and utilization, durability of benefit with long-term use, optimal dosing, responder variability, and which disease or aging phenotypes actually benefit.”
NXT USA, which represents Suthar’s BluNADBooster to supplement companies, funded a study of walking speed that the company claims provides some of that evidence, but Suthar wants more. “The next phase of NAD⁺ science needs to shift from ‘can we raise NAD⁺’ to where, how, and for whom does raising it translate into a measurable physiological outcome.”
Suthar also contends that a wider view that incorporates NAD⁺ into strategies and formulations that go beyond the narrow goal of raising NAD⁺ levels in blood or tissue is needed. NAD⁺ supplements need a clearer mission and, possibly, other ingredients to help them accomplish that mission. “A systems-based approach to NAD⁺ modulation is already gaining traction in the literature, and multi-target formulations are likely to offer more differentiation than another single-precursor product,” he says.
Single precursor or not, Cornelius argues that NAD⁺ faces a reckoning without definable and probable outcomes. “The ingredients that last are the ones where the science catches up to the hype. The ones that burn out keep innovating on the label instead of on the evidence.”
Blood-stained
It wasn’t the reckoning Cornelius describes, but NAD⁺ supplements did hit a skepticism speed bump in May, when Nature Metabolism published a study charging that “whole blood NAD⁺ levels do not vary with age or lifestyle interventions.” The findings threw cold water on much of the value proposition behind NAD⁺ products. If NAD⁺ does not decline with age, does it need to be raised? And if there is no decline, what does it have to do with aging in the first place?
Both Fried and Shao dismiss the study for looking at the wrong target. Fried explains that Niagen’s product “elevates the NAD⁺ in the tissues, but not in the blood,” while Shao explains that the blood level question is another “gap that needs to be filled.”
“Can a blood test tell you? Or do you have to get a tissue biopsy to tell you? Or can a brain scan tell you? That’s a gap,” Shao notes.
A portion of that gap may have been filled shortly after Longevity Biz spoke with Shao. A study published in Aging Cell found that supplementation with Niagen’s ingredient slowed markers of epigenetic aging in muscle tissue in a twin cohort. Niagen also announced an agreement with a German drug discovery company to explore uses for a derivative of its signature NR ingredient. Continuing to fill in gaps and build science, both Shao and Fried agree, is what keeps the NAD⁺ precursor category growing.
Science steers the micro-category around the brick wall that doomed resveratrol.
That might be something every niche in the longevity industry should remember.