AICAR is 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide — a nucleotide analogue, not a peptide. AICAR is sold here for laboratory research in 1 size (50mg), from $60.00 a vial. It is not an FDA-approved medicine. Research use only, and never for people or animals.
AICAR specifications
| Product name | AICAR |
|---|---|
| Also sold as | AICAR peptide, acadesine |
| Physical form | Freeze-dried powder, a solid cake in a sealed vial |
| Appearance | White to off-white cake |
| Sizes on this page | 50mg |
| Purity specification | ≥99% by RP-HPLC. The number for the lot you receive is whatever its own certificate says. |
| Identity check | Mass spectrometry, read against the mass this compound should have |
| Net content | Weighed per lot and reported separately from purity |
| Lot documentation | Tested by Kovera Labs; each lot's certificate posts here when it is reported |
| Storage | Sealed, cold and out of the light |
| Ships from | Santa Ana, California by USPS with tracking on every order, same business day on verified in-stock orders placed before 12 PM Pacific |
| Intended use | Laboratory research only. Not for human or animal use. |
What is AICAR, and what is it used for?
AICAR is also listed and searched as AICAR peptide, acadesine. They all mean the same compound. Supplier lists write it as peptide AICAR as well; every one of those is this record. A name is not a test, which is why the lot record further down counts for more than the wording on a label.
5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide — a nucleotide analogue, not a peptide.
Taken into cells and phosphorylated to ZMP, an AMP analogue that activates AMP-activated protein kinase by mimicking the cell's low-energy state. AMPK activation shifts metabolism toward oxidative pathways.
Exercise physiology and metabolic disease, principally as an orally active AMPK agonist in rodent endurance and metabolic models.
No approved product. AICAR is prohibited in sport by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and AMPK activation is a broad metabolic intervention whose long-term consequences are not characterized.
AICAR for sale: 50mg vials, price per mg
AICAR is sold in 1 size here, 50mg, from $60.00 a vial. AICAR cost and AICAR price per mg by size are in the table, at each volume tier and on subscription; the per-mg figure under each price is the one that compares across sizes.
Volume and subscription pricing by size
| Size | One vial | 10–19 vials−10% | 20 vials−15% | Subscribe monthly−6% from shipment 2 | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AICAR 50mg | $60.00$1.20/mg | $54.00a vial · $1.08/mg | $51.00a vial · $1.02/mg | $56.40a vial, shipment 2 on · $1.13/mg | Backordered — waitlist |
Volume tiers are per size and do not combine across sizes (see bulk pricing). Subscribe & Save takes 6% every month, 4% every 2 months or 2% every 3 months off from shipment 2, two shipments minimum, and stacks on the volume tier: the lowest this record ever bills is $0.96 per mg, twenty 50mg vials on a monthly subscription from shipment 2 onward.
Nothing is added at checkout except the USPS shipping you choose; dispatch and delivery are the same on every order. The cost-per-milligram tool ranks the whole catalog by price per mg.
Where to buy AICAR: what to check before you order from anyone
Where to get AICAR, and how to buy AICAR online
AICAR for sale, or AICAR peptide for sale, means this page: one record, 1 size. You can buy AICAR online here with guest checkout, and purchase AICAR or order AICAR in any size below; verified in-stock orders placed before 12 PM Pacific are dispatched the same day.
Before ordering AICAR from anyone, us included, run the 5 checks on verifying a certificate; the first is that the report resolves on the laboratory's own site, and a seller who cannot pass them is asking for the trust a certificate exists to replace.
AICAR capsules, oral form or liquid? What this vial is, and is not
Search results for AICAR also show capsules, oral form, liquid products, under listing titles such as aicar capsules, aicar oral, aicar oral bioavailability, aicar pills, aicar powder, buy aicar capsules. Those are finished consumer goods made and marketed by other companies, and none of them is what this page sells. This record is freeze-dried AICAR in a sealed glass vial, 50mg, with a lot certificate, supplied for laboratory work. Its certificate describes that powder, not a capsule, spray or cream, which carry other ingredients and sit under different rules.
The AICAR certificate: lot, purity, identity, and how to verify it
A certificate answers identity, purity and net content as three separate questions, each with the method that produced it and the date it was run, how to read one covers what each field does and does not cover.
AICAR certificates post here and in the certificate index when Kovera Labs reports on the lot.
Solution arithmetic for the bench, with no administration guidance: the vial concentration calculator, preset to AICAR.
Where the FDA stands on AICAR
FDA status, and what this listing is Not an FDA-approved drug product
The FDA has not approved this compound for anything, and nothing in this catalog is a medicine.
Status verified 2026-08-25. Check the primary source before relying on this summary.
It is sold as laboratory material under the research-use restriction below. Being listed is not an approval, and not a claim that it is safe, effective or right for any purpose.
AICAR research: what the published studies examine
Status: No FDA-approved application. This compound is sold as laboratory material. Where research on it has been published, it sits at the animal, cell or early-human stage, and this record does not summarize what it found. A supplier is not a neutral judge of evidence about its own catalog.
AICAR is not a peptide; it is a nucleotide analogue included here as an adjacent research material. Its mechanism is a neat piece of biochemical mimicry: taken into cells it is phosphorylated to ZMP, which resembles AMP closely enough to activate AMP-activated protein kinase. AMPK is the cell's energy sensor, normally activated when the AMP-to-ATP ratio rises — that is, when energy is scarce — so AICAR effectively convinces the cell it is running low on fuel and triggers the metabolic response to that state, shifting toward oxidative pathways.
The consequence that drew attention is that this response overlaps substantially with the adaptation to endurance training, which is why the compound acquired the "exercise mimetic" label. The label is doing a lot of work, though: activating one arm of a training response is not the same as training.
| Reported observation | Model | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Testing pathway-specific drugs on mouse endurance in a treadmill running test, a PPAR-beta/delta agonist and exercise training synergistically increased oxidative myofibers and running endurance. Unexpectedly, in SEDENTARY mice, four weeks of AICAR treatment alone induced metabolic genes and enhanced running endurance by 44%, demonstrating that the AMPK-PPAR-delta pathway can be targeted by orally active drugs to enhance training adaptation or increase endurance without exercise. | C57BL/6 mice, treadmill endurance testing, four weeks of oral treatment | Narkar and colleagues, AMPK and PPARdelta agonists are exercise mimetics, Cell (2008)The Salk Institute paper that made this compound widely known — and directly prompted its addition to anti-doping lists. |
| A related mechanistic point from the NNMT inhibitor literature: intracellular NAD is manipulated through the enzymes that synthesise and consume it rather than by adding cofactor from outside, illustrating how cellular energy-metabolite pools are actually altered pharmacologically. | cultured adipocytes with intracellular metabolite measurement | Neelakantan and colleagues, Selective and membrane-permeable small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase reverse high fat diet-induced obesity in mice, Biochemical Pharmacology (2017)Cited for the general principle about manipulating energy-metabolite pools, not as a study of AICAR. |
Open questions. The mechanism is well understood and the 2008 endurance result is real, in mice, at four weeks. What is not established is anything about longer exposure or other species. AMPK is a master metabolic regulator active in essentially every tissue, so activating it pharmacologically is a systemic intervention rather than a muscle-specific one, and the consequences of sustained activation are not characterized — AMPK signalling intersects with cell growth and survival pathways in ways that cut both directions depending on tissue and context. AICAR has no approved indication.
It is explicitly prohibited in sport by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is a compliance fact worth knowing before purchase rather than after. Note also that it is a nucleotide analogue, so the analytical methods appropriate to it are not the peptide methods used for most of this catalog.
Each row above describes an observation in the stated model. None of it describes what AICAR would do in a person or an animal outside that model, and none of it is a recommendation to use it for anything.
How to store AICAR: refrigeration and shelf life
Keep the sealed vial cold and out of the light and it stays as it left the lab. Once it is mixed into a solution, how long it holds up depends on the compound, what it was mixed with, how strong the solution is and how cold it is kept — too many variables for anyone to print one shelf life on a label. So laboratories write the date on whatever they prepare and keep their own record of it.
For solution preparation arithmetic on the bench, concentration, per-graduation values and molarity, use the vial concentration calculator, which opens with the AICAR sizes stocked here already loaded. It covers laboratory measurement only and contains no administration guidance.
