Niagen Bioscience has secured a worldwide exclusive commercial licence agreement with Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway, for the development of a treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD).
The agreement grants Niagen Bioscience exclusive rights to proprietary intellectual property, know-how and data, critical for future regulatory filings in the European Union under European Medicines Agency guidelines for the potential treatment of PD using its patented nicotinamide riboside (Niagen) molecule.
It is now the only company that holds the right to seek regulatory approval for a pharmaceutical nicotinamide riboside (NR) therapy for PD patients.
Niagen Bioscience can choose to commercialise the drug candidate independently or sublicense the programme to a strategic pharmaceutical partner.
Niagen Bioscience CEO Rob Fried stated: "This milestone underscores our long-term commitment to translating scientific innovation into meaningful therapeutic solutions."
A key element of this agreement is access to scientific data from the NOPARK trial, the largest clinical investigation of NAD+ augmentation in early PD to date.
Completed in June 2025, the study involved 400 individuals with early-stage PD across 12 sites in Norway, who received either 500mg of nicotinamide riboside or placebo for 52 weeks. The primary endpoint was the MDS-UPDRS total score, a standard measure of PD progression.
Professor Charalampos Tzoulis, who leads the NOPARK study, commented, "This is an important milestone in our efforts to bring a potentially disease-modifying treatment for PD closer to patients." He highlighted the agreement as a significant step towards developing treatments for PD and other neurodegenerative disorders.
The agreement builds on a collaboration between Haukeland University Hospital’s Dr Charalampos Tzoulis and Niagen Bioscience’s external research programme, CERP. Since March 2018, CERP has supported 300 research collaborations and more than 35 peer-reviewed clinical studies, including several assessing the therapeutic potential of Niagen NR for PD.
In conjunction with the licence agreement, Niagen Bioscience has established a wholly-owned subsidiary, marking a pivotal step in its transition from supplement science to regulated drug development for neurodegenerative diseases with high unmet needs.
