Development for treatment and prevention of viral infections and their sequelae, such as the cytokine storm due to COVID-19.
Our medical support company,
Mirailab Bioscience Inc. (HQ: Chuo, Tokyo; CEO: Megumi Tanaka) revealed that NMN may be effective in treating and preventing damage caused by viral infections, like COVID-19 and influenza. This research was conducted along with the non-profit organization The Systems Biology Institute (Shinagawa, Tokyo; President: Hiroaki Kitano) and SBX BioSciences, Inc. (Vancouver; CEO: Ayako Yachie).
The results of this research were published worldwide in the British international science journal Scientific Reports on July 21, 2023 (Japan time)(1).
NMN is a substance naturally produced in our body from components like vitamin B3, and it is essential for the activity of our cells. With aging, our body can produce less and less NMN, and this is thought to be one of the factors that aggravates age-related conditions (such as lifestyle-related diseases, cancer or dementia). The impressive qualities of NMN (anti-aging, heart protection and treatment against neurodegenerative disease, etc.) are applied in more and more fields every day, ranging from functional foods to healthcare products, drugs, and pharmaceutical intermediates.
This research belongs to the series of clinical studies we have designed to achieve our long-cherished goal of unlocking all the potential of NMN.
In this research, we used human-derived pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells and coronary artery endothelial cells (these are cells involved in thrombus formation and excessive inflammatory response (cytokine storm), also known aftereffects of COVID-19). We cultured these cells and then added a substance called poly(I:C) (which has a structure similar to viral RNA), an intervention that imitates a viral infection. As a result, we observed an increase in the expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is considered a major inflammation-inducing factor, but we also observed how the expression of IL-6 decreased with the simultaneous addition of NMN.
Furthermore, the quantification of all genes expressed in cells (transcriptome analysis) and the analysis of the relationship between hundreds of genes with distinct expression levels (Bayesian network analysis) suggest that in vascular endothelial cells exists a robust regulatory mechanism that allows NMN to mitigate the activation of inflammatory pathways. This opens new possibilities for NMN in the treatment of chronic and acute inflammation caused by viral infections and their sequelae, such as cytokine storms caused by SARS-Cov2, and age-related arteriosclerosis.
Mirai Labo BioScience Co., Ltd. is our medical support company and a leading company in the world that started selling NMN supplements in 2015 (2). Aiming for the global realization of Productive Aging based on scientific evidence, we expand MiRMes, our series of heath degree mail analyses that quantify the effects of NMN, and will continue our efforts to contribute to improve society’s quality of life with our NMN supplements, reagent material for NMN infusion research and NMN cosmetics(4).
(1) “Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) alleviates the poly(I:C)-induced inflammatory response in human primary cell cultures”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-38762-x
(2) Text in Japanese.
https://www.atpress.ne.jp/news/59540
(3) Text in Japanese.
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000015.000103030.html
(4) https://mirai-lab.jpn.com/en/pages/history
