Indole-3-propionamide (IPAM)

IPAM is the market abbreviation for indole-3-propionamide, the amide of indole-3-propionic acid and a close structural relative of melatonin. It is a defined and identifiable molecule, PubChem CID 351791, CAS 5814-93-7, but the literature behind it is unusually thin: essentially one substantive biological paper, published in 2010 (PMID: 20421998).

That paper is worth describing carefully, because almost everything claimed for the compound traces back to it. The authors designed the amide from indole-3-propionic acid to obtain a less polar molecule that crosses membranes more easily, then discovered that it also occurs naturally. After an oral tryptophan load of 300 mg/kg in one-month-old male Sprague-Dawley rats, brain levels of indole-3-propionamide, melatonin and indole-3-propionic acid all rose to reproducibly measurable amounts. When 0.5 mg/kg was given intraperitoneally, indole-3-propionamide reached high brain concentrations at 2, 4 and 8 h while melatonin and indole-3-propionic acid at the same dose did not raise their own barely detectable baselines (PMID: 20421998).

The proposed mechanism is mitochondrial rather than receptor-mediated. The compound appears to act at complex I of the respiratory chain as a recyclable electron and proton carrier, stabilizing electron flow and reducing electron leakage, so that fewer reactive oxygen species are produced in the first place rather than scavenged afterwards. In brain mitochondria from young and 20-month-old rats it antagonized the age-related fall in membrane potential and blocked the collapse of proton potential caused by doxorubicin, antimycin A and the uncoupler FCCP. In mouse brain mitochondria at 10 nM it increased complex I and complex IV activity. In a hydroxyl radical generating system it reduced radical formation without producing pro-oxidant intermediates, and it reduced hydroxyl radical mediated DNA damage in rat forebrain homogenate with an IC50 of 0.18 micromolar against 1.4 micromolar for melatonin (PMID: 20421998).

The headline result in that paper is a lifespan experiment in the bdelloid rotifer Philodina acuticornis odiosa, where mean lifespan rose from 24.6 days to 90.5 days at the highest concentration tested, with larger body size and more offspring per animal. A rotifer is a very long way from a person, and no vertebrate lifespan or healthspan study has followed.

Two cautions belong on this page. First, no toxicology study, no pharmacokinetic study beyond those brain concentration measurements in rats, and no human exposure of any kind has been published for this compound. Second, recent medicinal chemistry papers describing 1H-indole-3-propionamide compounds as selective NaV1.7 inhibitors for pain concern a series of substituted derivatives rather than indole-3-propionamide itself, and should not be read as evidence about this molecule (PMID: 39881860, PMID: 42503835). Indole-3-propionamide has no FDA or EMA record, no clinical development program and no registered trial, and material sold as IPAM is a research-use-only compound in the US market.

Indole-3-propionamide (IPAM) is available in liquid form.

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

1 of the vendors BodyHackGuide tracks list Indole-3-propionamide (IPAM) (1 listing). Among BodyHackGuide's Indole-3-propionamide (IPAM) listings recorded as in stock with a milligram count, the lowest price per milligram is $6.50/mg at Disguised Alpha and the median is $6.50/mg. The Indole-3-propionamide (IPAM) prices on BodyHackGuide are vendors' listed prices as BodyHackGuide last recorded them, not transactions; the most recent recorded change to a Indole-3-propionamide (IPAM) listing is dated 7 September 2026.

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