AICAR (acadesine)

AICAR is a nucleoside analog of adenosine. Under the drug name acadesine it was developed by Gensia Pharmaceuticals as an adenosine-regulating agent meant to protect the heart during bypass surgery, and the rights later moved through several companies including Schering-Plough for the cardiac program and Advancell and Protherics for a separate blood-cancer program, which received European orphan drug status for B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (PMID: 18457469). It has never been approved for sale as a medicine in any country.

Inside a cell, AICAR is phosphorylated to a molecule called ZMP that looks enough like AMP to switch on AMP-activated protein kinase, the enzyme that acts as a low-energy sensor. In isolated rat liver cells this happened without changing the actual ATP, ADP or AMP content of the cell, which is why AICAR became a standard laboratory tool for turning AMPK on (PMID: 7744080). Switching AMPK on pushes cells toward burning glucose and fat and away from making fat and cholesterol.

The reputation AICAR has in fitness circles comes from one mouse experiment. Sedentary mice given AICAR by daily intraperitoneal injection for four weeks ran 44 percent longer on a treadmill than untreated mice, and the authors described the AMPK and PPAR-delta pathway as a target for exercise-mimicking drugs (PMID: 18674809). AICAR also improved muscle function in dystrophin-deficient mdx mice (PMID: 22908954).

Human work looks different. In healthy men, intravenous AICAR roughly doubled glucose uptake into leg muscle but raised whole-body glucose disposal by only about 7 percent (PMID: 17513706). In men with type 2 diabetes, an intravenous infusion lowered liver glucose output and circulating free fatty acids (PMID: 18709353). A follow-up study found the muscle response is blunted with older age rather than by diabetes itself (PMID: 19190259). None of these were exercise or body-composition studies, and no published human trial has measured endurance or muscle mass after AICAR.

Where large human trials do exist, they were negative. RED-CABG randomized 3080 bypass surgery patients to acadesine or placebo and was stopped early for futility, with no reduction in death, stroke or severe left ventricular dysfunction (PMID: 22782417). A phase I/II study in relapsed leukemia established a maximum tolerated intravenous dose and reported hyperuricemia, transient anemia and thrombocytopenia, renal impairment and infusion-related hypotension (PMID: 23228986).

What sells online as AICAR is a lyophilized powder in a vial. The studied product was a hospital intravenous infusion made to pharmaceutical standards, which is not the same thing as vialed powder from a research chemical supplier.

AICAR (acadesine) is available in vial form.

Compare prices, payment methods, shipping, and COA scores across 1 vendor.

1 of the vendors BodyHackGuide tracks list AICAR (acadesine) (1 listing). Among BodyHackGuide's AICAR (acadesine) listings recorded as in stock with a milligram count, the lowest price per milligram is $1.000/mg at Disguised Alpha and the median is $1.000/mg. The AICAR (acadesine) prices on BodyHackGuide are vendors' listed prices as BodyHackGuide last recorded them, not transactions; the most recent recorded change to a AICAR (acadesine) listing is dated 7 September 2026.

BodyHackGuide holds 11 third-party certificate records for AICAR (acadesine), from . No editor has read any of BodyHackGuide's 11 certificate records for AICAR (acadesine). The laboratory named on BodyHackGuide's AICAR (acadesine) certificate records is Freedom Diagnostics Testing, and the newest test date on them is 18 August 2026. Each vendor page on BodyHackGuide shows how many certificate records BodyHackGuide holds for that vendor and links to each record that has its own page.