AICAR
Metabolic ResearchCAS 2627-69-2
Available sizes: 50 mg
An AMP mimetic
AMPK is the cell's energy sensor: it responds to a rising AMP:ATP ratio by switching off anabolic processes and switching on catabolic ones. Studying it is difficult because the natural trigger — energy depletion — changes everything else in the cell at the same time.
AICAR solves that. Taken up and phosphorylated to ZMP, it mimics AMP at the kinase's regulatory site and activates AMPK in a cell that is not actually short of energy. The pathway is isolated from its usual context.
Research areas, and one caveat
AMPK signalling, as the reference pharmacological activator
Glucose uptake and GLUT4 translocation in muscle
Fatty acid oxidation and the acetyl-CoA carboxylase axis
Mitochondrial biogenesis via PGC-1α
Exercise physiology, where AMPK is a principal mediator of the adaptive response
The caveat is that ZMP is not a perfectly clean tool: it affects other AMP-sensitive enzymes, so AMPK-independent effects are documented and a well-designed experiment controls for them.
Read alongside
MOTS-c activates AMPK by a different route, and SLU-PP-322 targets the ERR receptors that govern overlapping downstream programmes.
Documentation and verification
Certificates of Analysis are published for tested products and batches. A certificate is a batch-specific record: it reports what was measured, by which method, on a stated date, against a batch identifier. It is evidence about the sample analysed at the time of analysis, and it is silent on attributes it does not list and on what has happened to the material since.
The batch number is the field that connects the document to a physical vial. Where the identifier on a vial does not appear on a certificate, the certificate does not describe that vial, however thorough the analysis behind it was. Batch records can be searched directly, and the guides below explain what each field establishes and what it does not.
- Verify a batchSearch a batch number for the certificate records published against it.
- How to read a certificate of analysisWhat each field reports, and the limits of what a certificate can establish.
- Certificate, specification and safety data sheetThree documents that answer three different questions.
- Storage and handlingWhat defined storage conditions mean, and why cold slows degradation.
- Batch numbers and traceabilityHow an identifier ties material to the analysis describing it.
Supplied for laboratory research use only. Not for human or veterinary use.