Description
PrymaLab · Research Use Only
NAD+ Nasal Spray
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide · CAS 53-84-9 · 663.43 Da
NAD+ nasal spray supplies nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, CAS 53-84-9, molecular formula C21H27N7O14P2, molecular weight 663.43, in a metered spray. It is a dinucleotide coenzyme rather than a peptide, and that changes almost everything about how the format behaves.
Specification Table
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Compound | Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, oxidised form |
| Common designation | NAD+ |
| CAS number | 53-84-9 |
| Molecular formula | C21H27N7O14P2 |
| Molecular weight | 663.43 g/mol |
| Compound class | Dinucleotide coenzyme. Not a peptide |
| Structure | Nicotinamide mononucleotide joined to adenosine monophosphate through a pyrophosphate bridge |
| Charge at physiological pH | Net negative, from the pyrophosphate |
| Redox partner | NADH, the reduced form |
| Consuming enzyme classes | Sirtuins, PARPs, CD38, SARM1 |
| Rate-limiting salvage enzyme | NAMPT |
| Aqueous stability | Degrades continuously in solution, faster above neutral pH and at raised temperature |
| Photostability | Absorbs strongly in the ultraviolet. Photodegradation occurs |
| Format | Metered nasal spray, solution state |
| Appearance | Clear, colourless to very pale solution |
| Purity | Per lot-specific certificate of analysis |
| Storage | 2-8°C, protected from light. Do not freeze |
| Regulatory status | No approved intranasal formulation in any jurisdiction |
Why Does a Coenzyme in a Spray Behave Unlike a Peptide?
Almost every other spray in this catalogue holds a peptide. The handling intuitions built on those transfer badly here, and the differences are worth stating before anything else.
A peptide is amino acids joined by amide bonds. NAD+ is two nucleotides joined through a pyrophosphate bridge, one carrying nicotinamide and the other adenine. The two compound classes share almost no chemistry.
Degradation routes differ accordingly. Peptides deamidate, oxidise at methionine and cysteine, and aggregate. NAD+ hydrolyses at its glycosidic bond, undergoes addition at the nicotinamide ring under alkaline conditions, and photodegrades because both rings absorb ultraviolet strongly.
Rate is the practical difference. A well-formulated peptide solution held cold is stable for months. A NAD+ solution measurably degrades over days to weeks depending on pH and temperature, and a spray has been in solution since the day it was filled.
Analysis differs too. Peptide identity is confirmed by mass against a calculated sequence mass. NAD+ is more conveniently confirmed by ultraviolet absorbance, and the relationship between 260 and 340 nanometres reports the redox state directly.
What Does NAD+ Intranasal Absorption Face?
The permeability question is sharper for this molecule than for the peptides, and the reason is charge.
NAD+ carries a net negative charge at physiological pH from its pyrophosphate group. Charged molecules cross lipid membranes poorly by passive diffusion, and no widely characterised dedicated transporter moves intact NAD+ across mammalian plasma membranes.
That is the same constraint that limits what added coenzyme does in cell culture. Applying it to an epithelium raises the same question rather than avoiding it.
What may happen instead is extracellular processing. Ectoenzymes including CD38 and various nucleotide pyrophosphatases act on NAD+ at cell surfaces, and the products, nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide among them, are considerably smaller and uncharged or nearly so.
Those products do cross membranes. So an intranasal exposure to the coenzyme may in practice deliver its breakdown products rather than the coenzyme itself, and distinguishing the two requires measuring the species present over time rather than assuming.
A study that reports an effect of intranasal NAD+ without addressing that pathway has not excluded the simpler explanation.
What NAD+ Nasal Spray Dosage Figures Are Published?
Published intranasal work on this specific coenzyme is thin, which is itself the most useful thing to report.
The large NAD+ literature concerns intracellular concentrations, enzyme kinetics and precursor supplementation. Very little of it involves applying the intact coenzyme to a mucosal surface.
Infusion protocols reported in the clinical and grey literature use intravenous amounts in the hundreds of milligrams to low grams over hours. Those figures do not transfer to an intranasal spray in any straightforward way, because the route, the rate and the bioavailability all differ.
Precursor studies, which are far more numerous, use nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide at amounts in the hundreds of milligrams orally. Those are different molecules and their figures do not apply to the coenzyme.
The accurate summary is that no well-established intranasal amount exists in the peer-reviewed record for NAD+ itself. Anyone designing around this format is doing dose-finding rather than following a published range, and should approach it on those terms.
How Does NAD+ Nasal Spray Compare With Injection?
Both routes face the same underlying problem, and neither solves it cleanly.
Intravenous infusion delivers the coenzyme directly into circulation, so systemic concentration rises predictably. What happens next is the constraint: the molecule still cannot enter cells efficiently, so a raised plasma concentration does not straightforwardly become a raised intracellular concentration.
Intranasal delivery adds mucosal absorption uncertainty on top of that, and the charge problem applies at the epithelium as it does at any other membrane.
The nasal route does offer the olfactory and trigeminal pathways toward the central nervous system, which is the usual argument for it. Whether a charged dinucleotide of 663 daltons uses those pathways efficiently is not established, and the molecules for which nose-to-brain transport is best documented are generally smaller or less charged.
For research purposes the honest framing is that the format is a delivery experiment rather than a solved delivery method, and designs should measure what arrives rather than assume it.
What Should the Certificate and Storage Log Show?
A degrading solution product needs more documentation than a stable one, and specific fields carry the weight.
Concentration determined analytically at fill rather than calculated from the mass weighed into a batch. Ultraviolet absorbance at 260 nanometres against a known extinction coefficient gives it quickly.
The ratio of absorbance at 260 to 340 nanometres, which reports how much of the preparation is in the reduced form. The oxidised form has negligible 340 absorbance, so a rising signal there indicates the material has partly reduced.
Free nicotinamide content. It is the principal degradation product, it is biologically active in its own right, and it inhibits sirtuins, so a preparation carrying a significant fraction is not a clean reagent.
Buffer composition and pH, because both set the degradation rate and neither is deducible from a label. Slightly acidic conditions favour the oxidised form.
Fill date, which for this compound is the single most informative field on the document. Degradation runs from the moment the solution exists.
How Should an Intranasal Coenzyme Study Be Designed?
Because the delivery question is unsettled, the design should measure delivery rather than assume it.
Quantify what reaches the mucosa. Weighing the applied volume and recovering what drains gives a crude but real deposition figure, and it is more information than any product label carries.
Measure the species present over time, not just at one point. Mass spectrometry of a mucosal wash or a plasma sample distinguishes intact coenzyme from nicotinamide riboside, nicotinamide and the other breakdown products, which is the central ambiguity for this molecule.
Include a nicotinamide riboside arm at the concentration the degradation pathway would generate. If that arm reproduces the effect, the coenzyme was a delivery vehicle for its own metabolite rather than the active species.
Run a CD38 inhibitor arm where the system allows it. Blocking the principal ectoenzyme changes the extracellular processing rate, so an effect that shifts under inhibition is telling you where the action is.
A vehicle arm matched for buffer and pH is necessary because this compound needs a slightly acidic formulation to remain stable, and slightly acidic solutions are not inert on nasal mucosa.
How Should the Spray Be Handled?
Cold, dark, undisturbed, and used within a defined window measured from fill rather than from receipt.
Keep the bottle refrigerated at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius without interruption. Return it promptly after each use. The degradation processes here run continuously rather than being triggered by any particular event, so ambient time accumulates.
Protect from light throughout. Both the nicotinamide and adenine rings absorb ultraviolet strongly, which is what makes spectrophotometric quantification convenient and also means the molecule takes up photon energy readily.
Do not freeze, on container grounds. A pump assembly is not built for the volume change.
Inspect before every use. A clear, colourless to very pale solution is expected. Discolouration toward yellow or brown is the most accessible degradation indicator for this compound and should be treated as disqualifying rather than cosmetic.
Log the fill date, the arrival date, the date of first actuation, and any temperature excursion with its duration. For a coenzyme in solution the storage history is part of the experimental record rather than housekeeping.
One further consideration concerns comparability across formats. If a programme has used lyophilized coenzyme reconstituted in-house and switches to this spray, the two are not equivalent without a bridging measurement.
Freshly reconstituted material and material in solution since manufacture differ in their degraded fraction, and that difference maps directly onto effective concentration. Run both at matched nominal concentration in one assay on one day, and the gap becomes a number rather than an assumption.
Record the bridging result rather than repeating it each time. Once the gap between formats is quantified for a given assay, it becomes a correction factor rather than an open question.
Published Literature
References verified against the publisher record. NAD+ biology rests on a large independent literature. Intranasal delivery of the intact coenzyme does not.
- Cantó C, Menzies KJ, Auwerx J. Cell Metabolism. 2015;22(1):31-53.
- Yoshino J, Baur JA, Imai SI. Cell Metabolism. 2018;27(3):513-528.
- Rajman L, Chwalek K, Sinclair DA. Cell Metabolism. 2018;27(3):529-547.
- Cambronne XA, Kraus WL. Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 2020;45(10):858-873.
- Lochhead JJ, Thorne RG. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. 2012;64(7):614-628.
- Illum L. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology. 2004;56(1):3-17.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NAD+ nasal spray?
A metered spray supplying nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, CAS 53-84-9, molecular weight 663.43, in solution. It holds a dinucleotide coenzyme rather than a peptide. Laboratory research use only, with no approved intranasal formulation anywhere.
Why does a coenzyme behave unlike a peptide here?
Different chemistry entirely. NAD+ hydrolyses at its glycosidic bond, undergoes addition at the nicotinamide ring under alkaline conditions, and photodegrades. Peptides deamidate, oxidise at specific residues, and aggregate. The routes share nothing.
How much faster does it degrade?
A well-formulated peptide solution held cold stays stable for months. A NAD+ solution degrades measurably over days to weeks depending on pH and temperature, and a spray has been in solution since the day it was filled.
What limits intranasal absorption?
Charge. NAD+ carries a net negative charge from its pyrophosphate at physiological pH, and charged molecules cross lipid membranes poorly by passive diffusion. No widely characterised transporter moves the intact coenzyme across mammalian plasma membranes.
What might be absorbed instead?
The breakdown products. Ectoenzymes including CD38 and nucleotide pyrophosphatases act on NAD+ at cell surfaces, and products such as nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide are smaller and far less charged, so they do cross membranes.
Why does that matter for interpretation?
Because an observed effect following intranasal NAD+ could be an effect of its extracellular breakdown products rather than the coenzyme. Distinguishing them requires measuring the species present over time rather than assuming the parent molecule arrived intact.
What NAD+ nasal spray dosage is published?
No well-established intranasal amount exists in the peer-reviewed record for the coenzyme itself. Published intravenous protocols use hundreds of milligrams to low grams over hours, and those figures do not transfer to a spray in any straightforward way.
Do precursor studies help?
Not directly. Nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide studies use amounts in the hundreds of milligrams orally, but those are different molecules with different permeability, and their figures do not apply to the coenzyme.
Does the nasal route reach the brain for this molecule?
Not established. The olfactory and trigeminal pathways exist, but whether a charged dinucleotide of 663 daltons uses them efficiently has not been shown. The molecules with the best-documented nose-to-brain transport are generally smaller or less charged.
How is the redox state checked?
Through absorbance. The oxidised form has negligible absorbance at 340 nanometres while the reduced form absorbs there strongly, so the relationship between the 260 and 340 readings reports how much of the preparation has reduced.
What is the most informative certificate field?
Fill date. Degradation runs from the moment the solution exists, not from delivery, so a bottle that sat in inventory arrives in a different condition from one recently made and shipped cold.
What visual check applies?
Clear and colourless to very pale. Discolouration toward yellow or brown is the most accessible degradation indicator for this compound and should be treated as disqualifying rather than cosmetic.
Compliance Statement
NAD+ nasal spray is sold exclusively for laboratory research use. It is not a drug, food, or cosmetic product, and it is not a dietary product of any kind. It is not approved by the FDA or any comparable authority for human or veterinary use, no approved intranasal formulation of this coenzyme exists, and no well-established intranasal amount appears in the peer-reviewed record. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It must not be given to humans or animals. Purchase is restricted to qualified researchers and institutions operating within applicable laws. All handling is the responsibility of the purchasing laboratory.
Other formats of NAD
NAD is also stocked as NAD+ 500mg, NAD+ 1000mg, NAD+ (injectable) 500mg/ml preloaded 3ml pen and NAD+ 100mg/ml preloaded 3ml pen. Each listing states its own quantity and concentration, and the pen and vial comparison explains what changes between formats.
19 reviews for NAD+ Nasal Spray