ChromaDex closes deal to place Niagen in wide array of national chains
Under the terms of the agreement, BPI will have exclusive rights to introduce dietary supplement products featuring Niagen, ChromaDex’s branded form of nicotinamide riboside, in Costco, Walmart, Walgreens, Target, Miejer, Kroger, Publix, Vitacost, QVC, Home Shopping Network, Shopko, Ahold, eVine Live, Ulta, and Wegmans, with trade names including ‘Anti Aging Pill’ and ‘Cell 1.’
The deal with BPI Sports marks a trend for the ingredient, which has seen surging sales in the past 18 months. Last year ChromaDex filed a successful New Dietary Ingredient Notification on the patented ingredient, which consists of nicotinamide riboside, a form of vitamin B3. Niagen is an NAD+ precursor, and as such as been shown to have potential in ameliorating neurodegenerative conditions. The NDI notification was a lynchpin to the BPI deal.
“This ingredient is the first ever commercially available product specifically marketed as an NAD+ Booster and as such, has the potential for both anti-aging and weight management in ingestible form. Niagen represents real ground breaking science in terms of true life health span. It also illustrates BPI Sports continuing to use (NDIN) ingredients at a time when compliance within the industry is at the forefront,” said James Grage, vice president and co-founder of BPI Sports.
Science leads the way
Frank Jaksch, CEO of ChromaDex, said the deal is a significant boost for Niagen, which has seen meteoric growth from the company’s first deal in 2014 to place it into products marketed by a network marketing company.
“We still have a ways to go in building consumer awareness about Niagen but that’s hard to do unless you have some products on the shelf, and this deal with help with that. In general the whole story about NAD+ precursors is and aging starting to gain more momentum via credible research,” Jaksch told NutraIngredients-USA.
Jaksch said that research on the ingredient is ramping up as more researchers read papers on the ingredient’s effects. It’s a snowball effect, he said. In addition to studies into the ingredient's neuroprotective effects, researchers have looked at its ability to cut obesity-related inflammation and its effect on mitochondrial respiratory conditions.
“I’ve never seen this much interest as we’ve seen over the past couple of years. In two years we’ve signed more than 50 cooperative agreements with universities. I think signing four in that span would have been good,” Jaksch said.
“We started two years ago with preclinical trials, mostly in animals. Now the research is moving into human trials. We still have more work to do but in general the visibility goes up as the research backing goes up. I’m a big believer in the idea of letting science tell the story,” he said.
In addition to Niagen, ChromaDex supplies other branded ingredients such as pTeroPure, a nature identical form of pterostilbene, and PurEnergy, a co crystal ingedinet pairing pTeroPure and caffeine. The company also does analytical testing and markets a line of reference materials, and provides consulting services via its Spherix Consulting subsidiary.
