Martens, named an Innovation Ambassador at UD, has studied nicotinamide riboside, a naturally occurring NAD+ precursor, for more than a decade. Claims that NAD+ levels decline with age have sparked enormous interest in products designed to boost those levels in recent years.

But the science has struggled to keep pace with public enthusiasm.

“There’s a possibility that this stuff just doesn’t work for healthy aging,” Martens said. “We may find that it’s beneficial to some and neutral for most.”

While the study found no robust effects on primary outcomes, Martens was intrigued by hints of efficacy in secondary measures, including a potential increase in blood flow to the hippocampus — an area of the brain critical for memory.

“It’s promising,” Martens said. “But to really confirm whether NR is beneficial, we need a bigger clinical trial, where we give a large group of people the compound for a longer duration. These trials require a lot of funding and coordination, ideally across multiple sites.” 

For Martens, the study’s completion — almost a decade since he began working in this area — marks a major milestone. 

“Publishing this paper is important to the field because somebody — even if it’s not me — will carry the torch that will help translate this into a larger study,” Martens said. “This study took so long to complete because we were establishing the infrastructure for UD to conduct these kinds of clinical trials at the same time.” 

Now, with DECCAR in the College of Health Sciences, UD is better positioned and could complete this clinical trial in half the time, strengthening its role in future Alzheimer’s and dementia research.

“Studies like this prove that there’s an appetite for clinical trials among older adults in Delaware,” Martens said. “With DECCAR, we now have a recruitment pipeline, a registry, and the ability to track people longitudinally so we can bring larger, cutting-edge clinical trials in the Alzheimer’s space to Delaware.” 

Additional study co-authors from UD include Curtis Johnson, associate professor of biomedical engineering and DECCAR executive committee member; Alyssa Lanzi, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders (CSCD) and DECCAR executive committee member; Matthew Cohen, associate professor of CSCD and director of neuropsychology for DECCAR; Ryan Pohlig, associate professor of epidemiology and director of UD’s biostatistics core; Kevin Decker, a KAAP postdoctoral researcher; and doctoral students Mary Kramer, Fiona Horvat and Nicholas Rizzi.