The efficacy of the miracle drug has not yet been verified, but the fear of aging in human beings has been confirmed for generations.
Wen 丨 Liu Lutian
Edited by 丨Yao Yinmi
The more the details of modern life are satisfied, the more specific people's attention to their own bodies becomes.
In the 1940s, the American Myers Company invented the "one grain a day" vitamin marketing strategy, which targeted the middle class with "potential psychological panic about inconspicuous symptoms of nutritional deficiencies."
Myers argues that the key question is not what happens after consumers take it, but how to find the scientific basis (although the basis may not be perfect) to convince consumers that what they are about to buy is indeed "a drug that will have an effect on the body."
This medicine may not be useful, but it must be free of side effects. For consumers, the cost of time and money is relatively controllable. Miles's clever strategy has allowed the well-nourished American middle class to promote the development of vitamin manufacturing, which also proves that there is great commercial value in scientific terms.
Today, people living in big cities are no longer worried about the possibility of undernutrition. Aging begins to become like a disease, unwelcome and unacceptable.
So an academic star, a Hong Kong professor, some business opportunities, prompted by faith and ambition, with the help of a biochemical component, created a market of nearly 10 billion yuan in China alone.
NMN, the hottest dietary supplement in the past two years, has taken the lead in popularity from the rich, entrepreneurs, and investors, and has gradually spread. Believers say it can slow down the mitochondria in your cells and reverse aging from the root causes. At a time when biopharmaceutical stocks are seen as the future and vaccine classifications are simply referred to as "mRNA", this is a perfectly appropriate narrative.
Nowadays, you can see NMN on the streets of Macau or in the most prominent locations in the windows of pharmacies in shopping malls. In Chinese mainland, there are also stores that only sell NMN. In August 2021, the Japanese NMN brand Xinxinghe opened a store at Shenzhen Happy Coast Shopping Center, close to tourist attractions such as Happy Valley, Folk Village and Window of the World.
Xinxinghe clerk said that the best-selling product is NMN 9000, with a list price of 22588 yuan, for the "first old" people over 40 years old; followed by the 6000 series, with a list price of 14055 yuan, for 35-year-old "mature" people; and finally for the 30-year-old "first-ripe" group, which is half cheaper. The head office also has a single box of NMN milk powder priced at 1388 yuan, and NMN nutrition powder priced at 922 yuan for pets.
She handed over two brochures. The cover is golden and brilliant, and when it is turned over, it is a group photo of many Hong Kong and Taiwan celebrities holding NMN, including Zhong Liti, Wu Qilong, and Wen Bixia. "Miss Zhang Xiaohui called in the morning and told me that she had eaten NMN for half a month, slept upside down every day, and never lost sleep again. Last night to participate in the event, her friend asked her why her mental state is so full, let her share immediately, her friend added me WeChat directly ordered 4 bottles. The clerk said.
From discovery to popularity, there have not been enough clinical trials to prove that NMN can delay human aging. But this does not affect its popularity in China. Especially after the epidemic, the world has changed dramatically, and it is even more difficult for people to imagine what tomorrow will look like. Everyone hopes that they will grow older a little slower than before, so that they can go a little further into the future and see the world at that time.
It's been too many years to really see the effects of NMN, and people living in the moment must seize the possibility of confirming that they won't hurt themselves at this moment. This is also why a new anti-aging concept is bound to capture people's hearts in this era.
We interviewed dozens of participants to tell you the story of the birth of a new generation of elixirs. But we are also sure that this is not necessarily a new story, nor is it necessarily the last story of the human journey.
Overseas "Godfather"
David Sinclair, a professor at Harvard Medical School, turned his home into a small primeval forest. He firmly believes that living in an environment close to nature is more conducive to the continued health of life.
The house sits on the outskirts of Newton, Massachusetts, on the east coast of the United States, next to a nature preserve. The 185-square-meter backyard is not paved with artificial lawns, but allows plants to grow naturally. Trees and bushes surround a pond, fish often jump out of the water to interact with people, frogs and dragonflies lay eggs on the water, fawns come to the pool in winter to drink water, and a ribbon snake called "Fluffy" is also a friend of the Sinclair family.
Sinclair is a world-renowned bioscientist in the field of anti-aging, and in 2014, he was named one of the world's top 100 people by Time magazine for cutting-edge research. Over the years, he has been operated as a public image, making him known as the "godfather of anti-aging". He is 52 years old this year and claims to be in his early 30s. His youthful image testifies to his self-confidence: his apple muscles are full, there is not a wrinkle in sight on his face, and his brown hair is soft and thick.
Pictured: Footage of David's speech. Source: Video screenshot
The state of eternal energy has attracted countless elites around the world to refer to Sinclair's dietary strategy to "adjust the body". Like a delicate instrument following its timetable, he scrupulously selected the food or elements to be sent into his body, matching his eccentric habits, and persisted for fifteen years.
Every day when he wakes up, Sinclair prepares a special drink: Scoop a few spoonfuls of olive oil, add 1 gram of resveratrol powder and stir until melted. Olive oil allows resveratrol to be better absorbed by the body. He first proposed in 2006 that resveratrol, a red wine extract, is anti-aging.
For the rest of the day, he ate only one meal, ate only 2 hours, and kept an empty stomach for the other 22 hours, relieving his hunger with tea and water. Some anti-aging studies believe that a moderate diet can create a "difficult environment" that does not hurt the body, activating the body's "longevity gene" . The food on the table has been carefully selected: no red meat, mainly shrimp and fish, a large number of vegetables, and no sweets after the age of 40.
He advocates eating "unhappy plants," arguing that plants that grow in stressful environments produce special chemical molecules. Eating such plants can also help the human body cope with adversity. Although it sounds magical, it has been carefully analyzed by Sinclair and the students, and has been published in the form of an academic article in the authoritative journal Cell.
Sinclair always has a tiny InsideTracker analyzer on his chest — from one of his investment companies — that monitors changes in body temperature and heart rate, sleep quality, and mental condition— and transmits it to his family doctor. Although he traveled frequently, in order to avoid the damage of X-rays to DNA, he always refused to pass through X-ray human security screening machines at U.S. airports, only to be tested by body searches and metal detectors.
In the last two years, Sinclair's recipe has included 1 gram more NMN. Not only himself, but also his father, wife, children, and three pet dogs also took NMN.
NMN, whose full name is β-nicotinamide mononucleotide, is a derivative of the vitamin B family. In 2013, Sinclair's lab confirmed that after a week of continuous injections of quantitative NMN in older mice, the function of mitochondria in the muscles returned to the same state as in younger mice. Mitochondria, on the other hand, have the ability to regulate cell growth and the cell cycle. He immediately proposed that NMN may be the "magic molecule" at the forefront of reversing aging.
People are willing to believe Sinclair not only because of his authority at Harvard Medical School, but also because the way he delivers information is more appealing than most scientists.
He's adept at summarizing ideas that seem insightful and at the same time have a clear attitude. For example, human aging is not inevitable, it is actually a treatable disease. For example, if there are species in nature that can survive for tens of thousands of years, why can't people?
At a forum hosted by the Swiss Frontiers Open Science Platform at the end of 2019, Sinclair gave a speech entitled "Demystifying and Reversing the Aging Clock." Participants included more than 400 scientists, policymakers and industry representatives from around the world.
"How many people want to live to be 120 years old?" Sinclair's speech began with a question. About 1/3 of the audience raised their hands.
"How many people want to rejuvenate their 20s?" He asked again. This time, almost everyone raised their hands.
Sinclair smiled.
Two photos appear on the big screen behind them. One is his grandmother, who died at the age of 90 due to various illnesses. The other is his father, Andrew, who has been exercising and eating NMN every day since he was 40 years old. Today, 82-year-old Andrew not only has a new job at a university in Australia, but also travels and dates regularly.
Sinclair slowed down, making his voice more sonorous and powerful: "By studying aging, we not only have the possibility to live longer, but more importantly, we can live better." He also drew a more exciting conclusion for the listener: It is not impossible to extend life to 150 years before this century.
The field of anti-aging has only a few decades of research history. Researchers in this field believe that the root cause of many diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer is actually aging. If we can use biotechnology to analyze the mechanism of aging and find the cause of aging, we can eradicate these diseases once and for all.
Sinclair is the most "star" of this group of researchers. Born in Australia, he studied at MIT and became famous at Harvard; he holds more than 40 patents and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from 17 companies he has participated in. He often describes his findings in public as "miracle molecules," but experimental data is always questioned. One fellow researcher told Boston Journal: "It's hard to explain how the same lab has been able to publish so much data that other labs can't replicate over the past decade." ”
As a scientist, Sinclair's willingness to talk about how to treat herself and her family as experimental objects is also too "unconventional." An American journalist visited metroBiotech, an anti-aging drug research and development company under his umbrella, at the end of October 2019 and asked scientists in the lab if they had tried NMN themselves, and they said, "Of course not!" We are scientists. ”
But when asked by reporters why Sinclair was taking some drugs that could be risky and not approved, he said, "Because I'm a scientist, that's why I'm taking them." ”
The promoter of the Chinese market, but also a "godfather"
David Sinclair's research has created two huge markets in the Eighth Region of the Earth's East.
One in Japan. Shinichiro Imai, a professor at Washington University's St. Louis School of Medicine who co-founded Shinwa in Japan in 2013, was the first company to sell NMN to the public for 60 capsules for 20,000 yuan.
One in China. According to an interview with China News Weekly, also in 2013, the day after Sinclair published the results of his paper, Wang Jun, founder of biotechnology company Geneport, gathered colleagues to start researching the production of NMN.
Jun Wang graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Molecular Biology and then worked as a professor at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, specializing in molecular biology, enzyme engineering and biosynthesis. Founded in Hong Kong in 2004, Geneport was one of the first companies to supply original NMN powder to the Sinclair Lab at Harvard Medical School.
Wang Jun is a keen-sense operator who also has ambitions to become a godfather of promoting the anti-aging concept in the Chinese market. His partner, Zeng Yuanzi (pseudonym), remembers that Wang Jun would go out of his way to attend forums large and small, repeatedly talking about the importance of anti-aging and the efficacy of NMN.
Combined with Zeng Yuanzi's memories and online public information, Wang Jun is good at mobilizing resources from the top crowd, which has also led to the popularity of NMN in China starting from the upper class and sinking layer by layer.
In 2015, Wang Jun gave a report at the Yonggang Forum in Hong Kong, and Xi Ming, then mayor of Yuyao City and current secretary of the Yuyao Municipal Party Committee, sat in the audience. After the meeting, Xi Ming invited Wang Jun to Yuyao to investigate. In 2018, Wang Jun invested 2 billion yuan to set up an NMN production line with an annual output of 100 tons in Yuyao. Ji Keliang, the former chairman of Moutai in Guizhou, was also sitting in the audience at the time, and a few years later, he would write the preface to Wang Jun's anti-aging book.
After five years of preparation, Wang Jun's NMN products were ready, but they were not promoted until Zeng Yuanzi appeared.
Zeng Yuanzi first met Wang Jun at the Huating Hotel in Shanghai. It was May 1, 2017. Wang Jun is more than fifty years old, with three or seven points of hair, wearing a black suit, and likes to quote poetry and songs. Wang Jun mastered many patented technologies, the commercialization potential is huge, many have been sold, customers including listed pharmaceutical companies, except for one, has been tightly held in his hands for many years.
"It's valuable, and I don't want to sell it." Wang Jun's half-concealed answer made Zeng Yuanzi more and more curious. It wasn't until Zeng Yuanzi brokered and helped Wang Jun package and sell the three technologies to a listed pharmaceutical company that the other party was relieved: the technology that refused to sell was related to NMN.
Zeng Yuanzi had never heard of NMN at that time, nor did he believe that it could make people grow old not so quickly.
Five months later, Wang Jun invited several listed pharmaceutical companies, investment banks, and geneport executives to a dinner party. During the banquet, he distributed one by one the NMN tablets made by Geneport, one for each person, and everyone ate it. At that time, a grain of NMN cost 400 yuan, which was a generous gift from Dr. Wang Jun. Zeng Yuanzi found that after eating NMN, "drinking is indeed not on the head." At the end of the meal, everyone who came was drunk.
After the Spring Festival in 2018, Zeng Yuanzi began to prepare the nmnchina.com website, translating relevant papers and news into Chinese. He also signed up for a JD store and hung the purchase link on the website: 60 capsules, 9000 mg, priced at 1500 yuan.
To his surprise, someone placed an order the day after the website went live. The order volume rose steadily, and the monthly turnover soon exceeded one million yuan. In October 2018, Zeng Yuanzi resigned from the investment bank and is now the head of the e-commerce business of Geneport.
In the past three years, the price of NMN has dropped from 20,000 yuan per bottle to 1500 yuan, which means that the boundaries of the consumer circle have expanded.
Because of its earliest start, Geneport has still become the largest and most influential NMN brand in China, and also provides raw powder for most NMN brands on the market. The remaining important companies in the field of raw material production: large ones such as Shenzhen Bangtai, Zhejiang Shangke, Jiangsu Chengxin, small ones such as Shenzhen cranberries, the founders or key technicians have worked under Wang Jun for many years.
In 2019, Sinclair published a book that expounded his anti-aging philosophy, "Can You Not Stay Old", which was listed overseas for a week and ranked eleventh on the New York Times bestseller list.
In 2020, Wang Jun also published a book on aging, titled "Listening to Jun's Words: Aspects of Health and Longevity" published in Hong Kong. In the personal introduction on the inner page, he is called "the first person in Chinese anti-aging research". In addition to Ji Keliang, who prefaced the book, there was Xu Zhihong, former president of Peking University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chen Xinzi, honorary dean of the School of Pharmacy of Sun Yat-sen University.
Sinclair's discovery nine years ago made NMN a high-profile supplement darling in China.
A number of practitioners in the biopharmaceutical field told LatePost that most of the NMN raw materials come from China, the finished products are mainly sold to China, and most of the well-known NMN brands are founded by Chinese. According to a survey data from Tmall, the number of NMN products on the whole network was only 188 in January 2019, and by October 2020, it had exceeded 2962. A report by Ai Media Consulting said that the size of China's NMN ingredient health products market reached 5.106 billion yuan in 2020, an increase of 34.87% year-on-year; and it is expected to reach 27.013 billion yuan in 2023.
Food nutrition enhancer manufacturer Kingdomway's NMN products were launched on the e-commerce platform in July 2020, and the stock price subsequently rose eight times in 11 trading days.
Biotechnology listed company Bloomage Mentioned in its financial report for the first half of 2021 that the Group is promoting the implementation of the NMN project. Bloomage Biotech confirmed to LatePost, "We are indeed working on it and have achieved some results, but we have not yet entered the stage of industrialization." Two independent sources said that Mengniu and infant milk powder brand Beiyinmei are willing to develop dairy products with NMN added.
60 nmN per bottle, the cost of bare bottles is two or three hundred yuan, and the average market price is about 1500 yuan. Eating 2 capsules a day and eating 12 bottles a year costs nearly 20,000 yuan.
It's quite expensive.
Placebo for the rich with social currency
Zeng Yuanzi went to meet the first person to place an order on his website: Sunny, a 30-year-old Chengdu girl, who was a TV host and now a financial practitioner with an annual income of millions. Sunny was sneaky in her interview with us because her husband disagreed. He used the term "complicity" to think that the interview was some kind of trick on the brand side, afraid that his wife would be deceived.
When I clicked on Zeng Yuanzi's website, Sunny was indeed half-convinced. The webpage is brown with "NMN CHINA" written on the top and "Geneport China Office" at the bottom, leaving a phone number and mailbox, and nothing else. Even if she is suspicious, Sunny has no better choice, that is, in April 2018, she can only buy NMN through Japan, a bottle of 7900 yuan. And a bottle on Zeng Yuanzi's website is only 1500 yuan. She bought 12 bottles in one go, enough to eat for a year.
This Chengdu girl will become one of the first people to consume NMN, which is related to her upbringing. Her mother was a "very elaborate lady": she had to wear an umbrella when she went out, wear sunscreen, wear sunglasses, and eat soy sauce. My father, a doctor, developed his own anti-aging formulas from the age of 54: probiotics, peptides, resveratrol and grape seed extracts; powdered, tableted, and taken in varying numbers of times, costing thousands a month. Parents' habits are passed on to their daughters like genes. Sunny wears a mask every day and eats cod liver oil, vitamins, and CoQ10 before waking up and going to bed.
After the age of 26, Sunny began to focus on aging. Not just for looks. Her mother died suddenly of lymphoma and walked away in pain, she did not want to have a big problem with her body, anxiously searching for all the information related to anti-aging, looking for a newer and simpler "antidote" than her father's formula.
That's how NMNs are phased. At the end of 2016, Sunny went to Japan on a business trip to buy a bottle. After returning to China, she went to the Beijing Film Academy for further study, and the teacher praised her skin as "full of collagen". Maybe it was just a greeting, the teacher had never seen her before, but she was willing to believe that it was a proof that NMN was valid. To this day, Sunny never stops taking NMN every day.
No one around supported Sunny. An acquaintance who works in Japan, although he helps Sunny buy on behalf of him, thinks that "this is purely an IQ tax." No one in Japan buys it at all. The father believes that NMN is present in the daily diet and does not need to be supplemented. Sunny's husband, who is also a doctor, has eaten a bottle, but it doesn't work. Girlfriends say: It is better to have this money than to buy SK-II or Estée Lauder Black Silk Mask.
Sunny is like an island. But her pride as an investor supports her: "Finding something that no one else knows, you seem to run ahead of someone else." I'm going to give it a try, what if it works? She's not good at planning, but she always remembers when IT's time for NMN to stock up. She packed the NMN into a small jewelry bag and carried it around like a talisman with lipstick, keys and mobile phone.
"Health care products are not conventional consumer goods, they are spiritual consumer goods." Yu Hao (pseudonym), who founded a new NMN brand in Hong Kong in 2020, said. He is a serial entrepreneur who partnered with a listed pharmaceutical company in the NMN business at the end of 2020.
Yu Hao is not looking at the anti-aging health care product market, but the group of customers who pay for it. Most of the buyers are high-end people: entrepreneurs, investors, etc. The official retail price is four or five thousand a bottle, and there have been customers who buy 100 bottles at a time, just for gifts. In the early promotion, Yu Hao himself bought 60 bottles at a unit price of 980 yuan and gave them to potential customers and potential agents.
NMN first spread word of mouth in the investment circle and biopharmaceutical practitioners, and spread with the gradual decline in prices, opening beauty salons, doing high-end health care, doing stem cells, and opening golf clubs, all of which are in Yu Hao's circle of friends today.
Most of the people in China who maintain the NMN habit are business people aged 30 to 45 living in first-tier cities, mainly men. They have a certain degree of economic strength, high social status, but high psychological and physiological pressure, have a clear need to improve immunity, sleep better and fight fatigue, and are willing to pay a higher premium for NMN.
In the fight against aging, men do not have as many options as women.
NMNs are usually divided in purity, ranging from 3000 to 30000, the higher the number, the higher the purity. An e-commerce platform employee commented: "Men often pursue the ultimate when they consume, just like buying a mobile phone to buy Apple's latest model, buying a car will look at the engine displacement." "NMN just satisfies men's desire for a higher configuration. Although Professor Sinclair said that he ate NMN himself, he only took the powder left over from the experiment with water.
In the background consumer data of gene port Taobao stores: men account for 70%, like to "quietly place orders" - do not speak, and rarely comment, but regularly buy back. JD.com told LatePost that the male-to-female ratio of NMN consumers on the platform is also 7:3; the male-to-female ratio of Tmall health product consumers is usually 3:7, while NMN is 6:4.
Zhang Hui is a typical male NMN consumer, in his 30s, in a middle management position at an Internet giant.
He was originally very confident in his body. Seniors can play two full footballs in a row, with only a 20-minute break in between. His last job was at a fast-growing Internet company, extremely stressful, often flatulent in the stomach, but also prone to colds, effective working hours greatly reduced, ideas and spirit gradually lost.
During his tenure at that company, Zhang Hui never took a leave of absence, only one day off every weekend, and his physical condition was like lying on a spider's web, shaking. The most anxious one, he wanted to go to the Internet café to play a two-hour shooting game to relax, only to sit in for half an hour and throw up. When he first joined the company, everyone around him thought that he was only twenty-four or five years old at the age of thirty; nowadays, it is not difficult to guess his real age.
The intensity of the work cannot be controlled by him personally, and only the health care products can be stuffed with drawers year after year.
Worry about the eyes, buy lutein; often acne, buy detoxification pills; do not eat vegetables, buy vitamins. Willing to try anything. In Malaysia, he once met a Hong Kong couple who had wrapped up a plot of land and planted moringa seeds, saying they could control high blood pressure, so he bought two boxes directly from them and took them home.
Zhang Hui is well aware of why he is willing to give his body to these health products: "You will think that this is a shortcut, but in fact, it is to pay for your anxiety and low scientific literacy, it is as simple as that." ”
Difficult to perceive efficacy
Layer upon layer sinking market
It is extremely difficult to ask NMN users about their experience. Anti-aging is a slow action, the effect is slow, not like the treatment of cold headaches, it is easy to be perceived.
Late last year, Sinclair was asked on a podcast about what the NMN could bring. He replied vaguely: "If I don't eat, I can't have the vitality I have now." An anecdote was added: A friend of the same age who ate NMN had recently won a marathon.
Of the 11 people interviewed, only one woman was able to clearly state the effects of NMN, and she did medical aesthetics, saying that she could intuitively see the wounds that usually take a week to heal after taking NMN, and they had scabs in three or four days.
Practitioners who produce raw powder upstream in the industry chain also can't tell the effect of NMN, and some of them also believe that NMN is not the best choice for anti-aging ingredients.
Grassroots employees of Shenzhen Bangtai Bio can buy NMN through the company, "later for some reason can not buy it," said employee Chen Na (pseudonym). As someone who is exposed to NMN every day, she can't tell what changes it has brought to her body.
She asked me, among the people you interviewed, do you think NMN is effective?
After hearing the answer of "no one can say clearly", Chen Na said politely: "Our factory has been producing for so many years, it should be effective." ”
Bontai was one of the first suppliers of NMN raw powder in China and also supplied ORIGINAL NMN powder to David Sinclair's laboratory. According to the data provided by many sources to "LatePost", the factory price of the original one kilogram of more than 10,000 yuan has now dropped to about three thousand yuan, and the cheapest can even be as low as three or five hundred. A large number of NMN entrepreneurs have poured into the upstream market, resulting in lower costs.
Zhang Qi witnessed all this. She is the co-founder of Bontai.
In May 2012, Bangtai rented a biological research and development platform at Shenzhen Higher Vocational and Technical College and raised 6 million yuan, originally planning to promote NADH. In 2017, Li Ka-shing invested in ChromaDex, a U.S.-based company, to produce another coenzyme NR with a similar mechanism of action to NMN. But in China, the message spread as follows: Li Ka-shing is also doing NMN. From 2018 to 2020, NMN made waves in china's consumer market, and Bangtai expanded production twice, and NMN raw powder production increased by 120 tons from 4 tons per year.
Figure: NMN raw powder Source: Provided by Shenzhen Bangtai
The presence of Kindaway further detonated the NMN market. A financial industry practitioner told us that in early 2020, Kingdomway gave away NMN products to some fund managers, which made NMN gradually gain popularity in the investment circle. And they also happen to be NMN's target customers: middle-aged men in their 40s who are rich. Zeng Yuanzi observed that within a year after the continuous rise and fall of Kingdomway stock, there were hundreds of newly established NMN brands.
KOOYO is a "serious health product" brand founded in the United States in 2019 by bioscience consulting company ICS Venture, focusing on "scenario-based, strong body feeling, easy to share". NMN's somatosensory cycle feedback is long, which makes the founder Su Su hesitate for a long time, but considering its market recognition in China, it was launched as the first product line.
Among the products, there is a set of gold gift boxes with a price of 5288 yuan, which is aimed at 1% of people who have eaten NMN and want to use it as a social currency and circle tool to give gifts. But the main product is a small package of 16 capsules. It is intended to attract more ordinary consumers who have heard but have not eaten NMN, want to try it, but feel that the threshold is a bit high. "Such consumers make up 99 percent of the customers," Susu said.
In order to bring a re-purchase of small packages, it is necessary to enhance the body sensation of NMN, so that within two weeks, customers can clearly feel the change in the body. Using AI calculations, KOOYO screens formulation combinations with higher absorption rates from existing research results. In vitro, animal, and double-blind tests lasted two months, and after three-digit sample sizes from subjects, the results showed: "NMN is very effective for 40% of people." ”
KOOYO also put some thought into the packaging. Square packets, pure white background, LOGO and product names are bolded in bold. Opening the outer box, the NMN capsules are packed in some glass bottles filled with nitrogen. It is convenient for transportation, and it also draws a line with the image of "health care products" that people previously recognized.
ASHOKO is also a new consumer brand born in 2020, incubated by synthetic biology company Yikelai Biology. Founded in 2015, the four founders all studied at the Institute of Organic Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and inspired them to incubate ASHOKO because they saw that the sales of Geneport were in good condition.
They have planned a 200-ton NMN production line in Chongqing, which has already begun. It also found a Japanese partner, the price of the finished product is higher than that of Geneport, and the high-end female customer base is positioned. The silver cardboard box packaging does not remind people of health products, but more like a mask.
Photo: E-commerce leaflets for ASHOKO and KOOYO. Source: LatePost Cartography
Sinking further down, micro-business came in.
For Lin Zeqin, a young man in Chaoshan Province, NMN is not only a business, but also a little hope in a poor life. He has been working as a maintenance man and waiter since he was 18 years old, and has been working on many micro-business projects since 2013: masks, Cangzhou flavor and thai imported drinks... Most of them did not allow him to save more than 2,000 pieces in his pocket at the end of each year.
Last June, he signed up as a member of the micro-business institution Love Health, which specializes in NMN, which was a recent attempt, and also made him a lot of money, using the classic "pulling people's head" commission model.
He is very active on social platforms, weibo, Zhihu and Xiaohongshu have all opened accounts, posting Sinclair's speeches, NMN's popular science graphics and user experience videos. Most of the people in the video are middle-aged and elderly women, sitting in front of the camera, holding a small medicine in their hands, telling how good their spirits are after eating. Although, Lin Wenqin can't say why NMN can help sleep and even help people lose weight.
Lin Zeqin ate NMN himself and also gave it to his parents. He believed that in addition to making money for him, it also had some effect.
There is also a lack of an authoritatively recognized standard
Newly formed brands rely more on social platforms to expand their visibility, but there aren't enough trustworthy anti-aging bloggers.
It's not easy to be an approved "anti-aging blogger," whose job is somewhat like that of a scientist: they need to constantly come up with new ideas, break through people's established perceptions, and establish new authorities.
Yamu is a post-90s graduate of the China Academy of Art, came into contact with NMN as an anti-aging substance in early 2019, and bought some NMN raw powder on 1688. When searching for data, it has been mentioned in the literature that if you want NMN to reach more tissues and absorb better, you need to avoid the digestive tract and enter the bloodstream faster by nasal administration or sublingual administration.
Yamu personally practiced this method of taking, and wrote his findings into articles on Douban and Zhihu, and listed five Links to English papers at the end of the article. She often lists a long list of sources of information at the end of the article, and this literature review style of writing will make the article appear logical and reliable.
She also describes her experiences in detail in a sensual way. For example, on February 17, 2019, she described in detail her physical reactions after taking it for the first time, such as having a "rare lucid dream", which included: a bird bookcase, a flower and bird pattern, a black and white cube, an old photo of a tree, stone and a girl, and her mother who was far away from home came into the room to clean.
Yamu claims to read a large number of biological science papers every day and has long been following a discussion area called "Longecity". Study the experience of foreign netizens and use yourself as a test product to test various drugs.
Knowing that small molecule epigenetic drugs also have anti-aging effects, Yamu went to try this drug, such as the antidepressant anti-phenylcyclopropylamine, and sodium valproate for epilepsy. Both are prescription drugs. But Yamu still let go of the courage to eat. "Anti-aging is to try it on the human body, as long as it is taken according to the dosage of the prescription drug, there will be no problem." She said confidently. But once accidentally ate too much, the withdrawal reaction caused dizziness for two weeks.
All experiences of physical experimentation will be written into articles to share on the Internet. Every Saturday night, Yamu will share it live in Zhihu, and the number of online viewers usually reaches 6,000 to 7,000 people. Zhihu has gradually become her main active platform, and the profile under the account indicates that she "studies the fields of anti-aging, anti-fatigue and nootropics, and consults private messages."
People asked her passionately: Which brand of NMN are you using? Where to buy? How to pair with other health supplements? Manufacturers and health product manufacturers have also sent private messages one after another, wanting to find her to promote cooperation. In 2019, she set up a WeChat group for Zhihu fans, and now there are at least a dozen, each group of 3, 400 people. There are biotechnology companies to help her manage the WeChat group, from time to time to recommend their own distribution of health care products, give her "consulting fees".
Involved in the interests, it is difficult for bloggers to be completely trusted in their speeches, and there is no authoritative standard in the market.
At the end of 2019, more than a dozen brands such as Geneport, Kingdomway and Herbalmax Havelito have successively entered Tmall International. NMN is currently the TOP10 category of Tmall International Health Products, and platform staff believe that it still has growth potential. However, its access criteria are set very carefully.
Tmall International's margin standard for health food is 50,000 yuan, while the threshold for NMN is 300,000 yuan. This is also the highest standard in the health food category, which means that it is a highly sensitive category that needs to be focused on. The platform advocates that NMN must not send direct mail from overseas, must enter the Cainiao bonded warehouse, accept the official quality inspection of raw materials and products, and regularly sample each batch every month. Marketing also has strict requirements, such as not saying "elixir".
"How to quantify aging and how to comprehensively evaluate a person's degree of aging still lacks an absolute standard." Dr. Zhang Xuguang, Executive Director of the By-Health Nutrition and Health Research Institute and Director of the Science and Technology Center, said. The inability to unify results from different laboratories and the inability to correlate data is a common problem in biology and medicine. Some tests require very high accuracy of manual operation, and batch and standardized tests are even more difficult.
In early January 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the Letter on Investigating illegal operations of "immortal drugs", pointing out that NMN has not obtained licenses for drugs, health foods, food additives and new food raw materials, and cannot be produced and operated as food, and can only be sold through cross-border e-commerce.
In 2021, researchers in China, the United States, and Japan published human clinical trial papers on NMN. However, the sample size is small, which is not enough to illustrate its effectiveness. David Sinclair mentioned in a podcast interview at the end of 2021 that eating NMN for two weeks can double the amount of NAD+ in the blood, thereby boosting metabolism. But the results came from a two-year, "unpublished", peer-reviewed clinical trial.
Guo Wanlin, CEO of ASHOKO China, told LatePost: "The repurchase rate of a conventional oral dietary supplement is less than 5%, and we are in double digits. Su Su, head of KOOYO China brand, said that although KOOYO has many products such as antidotes and oral collagen, NMN's repurchase rate ranks first. The NMN repurchase rate of the Tmall platform is on the upper side of the ranking in health products.
The enthusiasm of the Chinese market will not be discouraged.
Humanity will always need a miracle drug
The wife of Liu Nan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is very disgusted with health care products. Every morning, Liu Nan would secretly sprinkle some NMN powder into his wife's cold water cup. "Well-motivated." He said half-jokingly.
Almost every biologist who studies aging will show you two contrasting pictures of mice: one wilting, trembling, and bald, and the other shiny, bouncing, and black eyes. On the third floor of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Biology and Chemistry of the Shanghai Academy of Sciences, Liu Nan also showed two such photos.
Several mice are lying in overlapping experimental chambers. Yellow-brown particles were scattered on the metal mesh at the top of the chest, which was their food. A test tube is inserted obliquely on the side, and the translucent solution inside is the drinking water mixed with NMN.
Liu Nan is one meter eight tall, has a loud voice, and has fitness habits. Although he is 46 years old, he does not have a trace of gray hair and his facial skin looks very firm. 600 mg, which is the total amount of NMN he consumes per day, is double the usual amount. From 2013 to 2019, Liu Nan's research group focused on gene targeting in the field of genetics, with the goal of breaking through the upper limit of lifespan. His greatest interest today is to explore the nodes where the aging curve begins to decline.
This change came by chance. In the summer of 2019, Liu Nan's students identified a target on a protein and wanted to see the effect of the target on the biological function of mice by adding coenzyme NAD+. If the intake of NMN was increased, the mice produced more NAD+, and they put 250 mg of NMN in their drinking water. A month later, the alopecia areata in the mice was covered with hair again and became visibly active.
A substance useful to mice is not the same as useful to humans. However, after that, Liu Nan began to eat NMN and firmly believed that NMN can indeed fight aging. In October 2021, his research group was collaborating with Shanghai Changzheng Hospital on a clinical test to detect metrics quantified by the body before and after NMN was taken, and it would take at least three months to know the results. "Aging research is a game on a time scale." He said.
Human understanding of aging is still very shallow. In the early 1990s, by studying Caenorhabditis elegans, the scientific community discovered multiple genes that regulate organ development and programmed cell death. They believe that as long as a few nodes in the gene are changed, age may be manipulated. Death no longer seems to be a metaphysical problem, but merely a "technical problem."
Investor Viktin (pseudonym) told us that in the investment circle and the currency circle, many people have spare money and free time, and they have an obsession: hoping to live until the arrival of the technical singularity. It refers to the fact that at some point in the future, the development of technology will become uncontrollable and irreversible, bringing unpredictable changes to human civilization. At that time, new life extension technologies will appear every few years, and people may be able to achieve immortality.
He also talked about another concept that is often mentioned by wealth-free people, "the speed of escape from longevity," which means that human beings may continue their lives faster than the rate of aging. These are all considered to benefit the current generation because of the increasingly hot field of entrepreneurship in the field of biological sciences, of course, first and foremost, people in good financial condition.
Two years ago, Viktin sat down with two friends who had achieved wealth freedom and chatted. One of them mentioned NMN and said that he wanted to buy it for parents in their 70s, "As long as this thing can improve their quality of life, even if parents will have side effects after 20 years of eating, it is worth it." The friend said. He listened, agreed, and also purchased two bottles of NMN through Tmall at the end of 2021. He uses the "value investing" approach to anti-aging: even if the effect is not confirmed, he is willing to try if it meets his price expectations and does not have to pay too high a premium for it.
Until the day of slowing down aging, NMN was nothing more than a stone to it.
David Sinclair has clearly heard about how he is used as a spokesperson by brands of all kinds. He states that he never recommends any brand: "If you find a product that implies my recommendation, it must be a scam. ”
Geneport's press releases often include a group photo of Sinclair and founder Wang Jun. Mr. Zeng said Sinclair had written a stern email because someone had taken a screenshot of Geneport and asked if the lab ingredients were provided by the company. "You can't take me to promote your products." He wrote.
In December 2020, Sinclair Labs published a new anti-aging work on the cover of the journal Nature, using the title "Back in Time.".
The first author of the thesis is Sinclair's Chinese student Lu Yuancheng. They found that if the Myc factor in Yamanaka Factor (a 4 genetic information factors found by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka that can reverse performance) was removed, it could reverse aging while avoiding the possibility of carcinogenicity, and even restore the damaged optic nerve in mice.
Professor Andrew Huberman, a legendary neurobiologist at Stanford University, commented on the report for the first time: Perhaps anti-aging has entered a new era.
The godfather had already devoted his vigorous energy to the next "era", and he set up a new company and refused our interview. The assistant said: "His schedule has been too crazy. ”