Elysium Health

Elysium Health is a company founded in 2014 by biologist Leonard Guarente, Dan Alminana, and Eric Marcotulli to market dietary supplements.[1] The next year, the company started selling a dietary supplement called Basis that packages two compounds, nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene.[2] The company says that these two ingredients help cells make nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and that they stimulate sirtuins.[1] The company is widely described as being in the anti-aging field.[1][2] Elysium is one of several companies founded at around the same time by people with backgrounds in the tech industry and Silicon Valley who saw opportunities in the health and biomedical industries, often focused on anti-aging.[1][3][4]

Not to be confused with Elysium Healthcare.
Elysium Health
TypePrivate
IndustryDietary supplements
Founded2014 (2014)
FoundersLeonard Guarente, Eric Marcotulli, Dan Alminana[1]
Headquarters
New York City, New York, U.S.
Websiteelysiumhealth.com

Criticism

The company has been criticized for using its advisory board to lend credibility to its product and for heavily marketing their product on social media. [5][6][1][7] Jeffrey S. Flier, Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine and former dean of Harvard Medical School, has stated that “Elysium is selling pills [without] evidence that they actually work in humans at all.”[8]

Elysium originally bought the ingredients in Basis from ChromaDex, which as of December 2016, sold the two ingredients to other supplement companies that also marketed products containing them.[1][7][9] The two companies had an agreement under which Elysium Health didn't have to acknowledge ChromaDex as the source of the ingredients, but then after Elysium recruited the VP of business development from ChromaDex and reportedly stopped paying ChromaDex, ChromaDex sued Elysium and the information became public.[10]

In September 2018, Dartmouth College and ChromaDex sued Elysium for infringing on patents for nicotinamide riboside.[11] In August 2020, W.R. Grace and Company also sued Elysium for infringing on their patents for crystalline nicotinamide riboside.[12]

References
  1. Wallace, Benjamin (August 23, 2016). "An MIT scientist claims that this pill is the fountain of youth". New York Magazine.
  2. Weintraub, Karen (February 3, 2015). "The anti-aging pill". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  3. Friend, Tad (April 3, 2017). "Silicon Valley's quest to live forever". The New Yorker.
  4. de Magalhães, JP; Stevens, M; Thornton, D (November 2017). "The business of anti-aging science". Trends in Biotechnology. 35 (11): 1062–1073. doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.07.004. PMID 28778607.
  5. Weintraub, Karen (January 6, 2017). "Critics blast star-studded advisory board of anti-aging company". MIT Technology Review.
  6. Vinluan, Frank (6 December 2016). "First clinical trial done, Elysium lands $20M for health supplements". Xconomy.
  7. Zhang, Sarah (July 6, 2016). "The weird business behind a trendy "anti-aging" pill". Wired.
  8. Bolotnikova, Marina (September–October 2017). "Anti-Aging Approaches". Harvard Magazine.CS1 maint: date format (link)
  9. Lowe, Derek (25 April 2016). "Subtle changes can be yours, for fifty dollars a month". In the Pipeline.
  10. Buhr, Sarah (January 16, 2017). "A new lawsuit alleges anti-aging startup Elysium Health hasn't paid its sole supplier". TechCrunch.
  11. Schultz, Hank. "ChromaDex, Elysium lock horns over outcome of appeals court decision on nicotinamide riboside patents". NutraIngredients-USA. Retrieved 2021-01-01.
  12. Yasiejko, Christopher. "W.R. Grace Sues Elysium for Patent Damages on Dietary Supplement". Bloomberg Law. Retrieved 2021-01-01.
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