AboutNAD

Dr. Charles Brenner is the Alfred E Mann Family Foundation Chair in Diabetes and Cancer Metabolism at City of Hope. Brenner is the leading global scholar on the topic of synthesis, regulation and quantification of NAD coenzymes and NAD metabolites in health and disease.

In 2004, Brenner, then a faculty member at Dartmouth College, discovered nicotinamide riboside (NR) to be a vital precursor of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is made available by nicotinamide riboside kinases (Nrks) that are conserved between yeast and humans.

Brenner has made multiple seminal contributions to NAD+ metabolism, which include engineering a yeast strain to convert inexpensive NAD+ precursor vitamins into NR, solving the crystal structure of human Nrk1, developing the methods for quantitative NAD+ metabolomics, and demonstrating the activity of oral NR in animal models of fatty liver disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, diabetic and chemotherapeutic neuropathy, heart failure, central brain injury, COVID and postpartum. Dr. Brenner also led the first clinical trial of NR, which established safe oral availability in humans. Brenner collaborates with research groups globally who are investigating activities of NR in reducing inflammation and improving human health and resistance to disease.

His research group at City of Hope is now focused on dissecting and treating the rare disease of Citrin Deficiency, which inactivates one of the key shuttle systems for NADH.

Dr. Bohr is one of the world’s most published researchers on aging and neurodegenerative disease with over 624 journal publications. For the past 30 years, Dr. Bohr served as Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Bohr earned his M.D., Ph.D. and D.Sc. degrees at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. After training in neurology and infectious diseases at the University Hospital in Copenhagen, Dr. Bohr undertook postdoctoral studies in Biochemistry in the laboratory of Dr. Hans Klenow at the University of Copenhagen, where he first became interested in nucleic acid metabolism. He developed this interest further in the laboratory of Dr. Philip Hanawalt at Stanford University where he held a Visiting Scholar position. Throughout his career, Dr. Bohr has made significant contributions and advanced understanding of DNA repair pathways, mechanisms and cellular response to oxidative DNA damage and oxidative stress.

In his recent studies, Dr. Bohr has made seminal findings about the relationships between DNA damage, DNA repair capacity and age-associated neurodegeneration. Additionally, he has proposed important models describing the transfer of signals between the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes, and showcased the importance of energy homeostasis/imbalance and mitochondrial dysfunction in aging-related neurodegenerative disease. Although retiring from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Bohr maintains a research lab at the University of Copenhagen where he will continue to study the benefits of NR.