Peptide Evidence Index

5-Amino-1MQ

Evidence last reviewed: September 2026

Quick answers

What is it?: 5-Amino-1MQ is not a peptide — it's a small synthetic quinolinium molecule built to block an enzyme called nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT), which is involved in how cells regulate fat storage and energy metabolism. It's sold alongside peptides but is chemically unrelated to them.
Why are people interested in it?: It's marketed for fat loss and metabolic health, with a consistent, reproducible mouse literature behind it — but no human has ever been studied taking it.
What has actually been studied?: A series of diet-induced-obesity mouse studies, almost entirely from one research group (University of Texas Medical Branch / Ridgeline Therapeutics), examining weight, glucose tolerance, liver fat and microbiome changes, alongside broader academic interest in NNMT inhibition as a drug target for obesity, diabetes and even heart failure.
How strong is the evidence?: None in humans. This is a complete absence, not thin evidence — no registered or published human trial of any kind exists.
What don't we know yet?: Whether any of the metabolic benefits seen in mice occur in people, and what a safe human starting exposure would even look like, since no pharmacokinetic study in humans has ever been run.
Where can I read the original research?: Sources at the bottom of this page: Neelakantan et al., Biochemical Pharmacology 2018; Babula et al., Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism 2024.

Plain-English overview

5-Amino-1MQ is not a peptide at all — it's a small synthetic quinolinium compound built to inhibit an enzyme, nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT), that is involved in how cells regulate energy metabolism and fat storage. It is grouped with peptides in marketing because it is sold through the same research-chemical channels and pitched for similar fat-loss and metabolic goals, but chemically it has nothing in common with an amino-acid-chain peptide. Nearly every published study of it comes from one research group, credited to Neelakantan and colleagues, working exclusively in diet-induced obese mice. No human has ever been studied taking it, in any registered trial or published report of any kind — not even a case report or a Phase 1 safety study. It has never been approved as a medicine anywhere.

What researchers are studying it for

diet-induced obesity (mouse studies only)
insulin resistance and glucose intolerance (mouse studies only)
fatty liver / hepatic steatosis (mouse studies only)

Current evidence level

Animal only

Regulatory status: Not an approved medicine. Evidence strength and approval are scored separately; approval is a regulatory decision about a specific use, not a measure of how much research exists.

Human research

None. No clinical trial of 5-Amino-1MQ is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov under any name variant, and no published human study of any kind — not a case report, not a Phase 1 safety trial — was located in the medical literature. This is a more complete absence than 'early' evidence; it is the total lack of any human research record. Because no human trial has ever been conducted, there is also no human dosing data of any kind to report.

Animal and preclinical research

In diet-induced obese mice, repeated dosing with 5-Amino-1MQ (also written 5A1MQ) has been reported across several studies from the same research network to dose-dependently limit weight and fat-mass gain, improve oral glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, reduce liver fat and liver enzyme markers, and — combined with a reduced-calorie diet — shift gut microbiome composition. A related NNMT-inhibitor compound (AMO-NAM) has separately been reported to improve cardiac structure and function in a mouse model of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and other, chemically distinct NNMT inhibitors developed by different companies have shown similar glucose- and weight-normalizing effects in diet-induced obese mice — suggesting the drug target itself, not just this one molecule, is an active area of research interest. These are consistent, reproducible findings, but every one of them is confined to mice.

Major findings

In diet-induced obese mice, repeated 5-Amino-1MQ dosing has been reported to dose-dependently limit weight and fat-mass gain.
The same mouse studies report improved oral glucose tolerance, improved insulin sensitivity, and reduced liver fat and liver enzyme markers.
Combining 5-Amino-1MQ with a reduced-calorie diet was reported to produce a distinct gut microbiome pattern in obese mice compared with diet change alone.
A related NNMT inhibitor separately improved cardiac structure and function in a mouse model of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, suggesting effects of this drug target beyond metabolism.
Other pharmaceutical-company NNMT inhibitor compounds, chemically distinct from 5-Amino-1MQ, have shown similar weight- and glucose-normalizing effects in obese mice, indicating broader research interest in this target.
No clinical trial of 5-Amino-1MQ, under any name, is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, and no published human study of any kind was found.

What has not been established

Whether any of the metabolic benefits seen in mice occur in humans at all.
What a safe starting point would even look like, since no human pharmacokinetic study has ever been run.
Whether the compound is absorbed, metabolized, or cleared similarly in humans as in mice.
What an unregulated vial sold online actually contains, given there is no approved manufacturing standard to compare it against.
Whether any company or academic group is currently planning the first human trial.

Important limitations

Almost the entire evidence base traces to one research network, without independent replication of 5-Amino-1MQ specifically.
There is no human research of any kind — no safety data, no dosing data, nothing — to weigh against the mouse findings.
Mouse metabolic studies, even when consistent, frequently fail to predict human metabolic drug responses.
5-Amino-1MQ is often marketed and sold as if it were a peptide, which it is not; buyers may not realize how different its chemistry and evidence base are from the peptides sold alongside it.

Regulatory status

5-Amino-1MQ has never been approved as a medicine anywhere. No human trial of any kind has been registered or published.

Primary research sources

Neelakantan H, Vance V, Wetzel MD, et al., "Selective and membrane-permeable small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase reverse high fat diet-induced obesity in mice": Biochemical Pharmacology 2018; PMID 29155147, DOI 10.1016/j.bcp.2017.11.007
Sampson CM, Dimet AL, Neelakantan H, et al., "Combined nicotinamide N-methyltransferase inhibition and reduced-calorie diet normalizes body composition and enhances metabolic benefits in obese mice": Scientific Reports 2021; PMID 33707534, DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-85051-6
Dimet-Wiley A, Wu Q, Wiley JT, Eswar A, Neelakantan H, Savidge T, Watowich S, "Reduced calorie diet combined with NNMT inhibition establishes a distinct microbiome in DIO mice": Scientific Reports 2022; PMID 35013352, DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-03670-5
Babula JJ, Bui D, Stevenson HL, Watowich SJ, Neelakantan H, "Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase inhibition mitigates obesity-related metabolic dysfunction": Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism 2024; PMID 39161060, DOI 10.1111/dom.15879
Li S, Rodrigues PG, Chakraborty AD, et al., "Nicotinamide-N-methyltransferase inhibition improves cardiac function and structure in a heart failure with preserved ejection fraction mouse model": Pharmacological Research 2025; PMID 40484359, DOI 10.1016/j.phrs.2025.107820
Ruf S, Rajagopal S, Kadnur SV, et al., "Novel tricyclic small molecule inhibitors of Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase for the treatment of metabolic disorders": Scientific Reports 2022; PMID 36104373, DOI 10.1038/s41598-022-19634-2

Full evidence entry (complete data, registry records, dosing evidence)

Animal only

Studied in animals; human evidence absent or minimal

At a glance

Also known as: 5-Amino-1MQ, 5-amino-1-methylquinolinium, 5A1MQ
Class: Small-molecule enzyme inhibitor — not a peptide, despite being marketed and sold alongside peptides
Derived from: Not derived from a protein or peptide fragment at all. It is a synthetic quinolinium compound designed in a medicinal-chemistry program to inhibit nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT), an enzyme involved in cellular energy metabolism
Registered human trials: 0
…with published results: 0
Largest human trial: None conducted or registered anywhere
Studied for: diet-induced obesity (mouse studies only), insulin resistance and glucose intolerance (mouse studies only), fatty liver / hepatic steatosis (mouse studies only)
Dosing evidence: No human dose establishedNo human trial of 5-Amino-1MQ has ever been registered or published, so no human dose exists. Figures sold or discussed online are extrapolated from mouse dosing using conversions never tested in people.
Regulatory status: Never approved as a medicine anywhere. No human trial of any kind has been registered or published.

What it is

5-Amino-1MQ is not a peptide. It's a small synthetic molecule — a substituted quinolinium compound — built to inhibit an enzyme called nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT), which is involved in how cells regulate energy metabolism and fat storage. It's grouped with peptides in marketing and on vendor sites because it's sold through the same research-chemical channels and pitched for similar goals — fat loss, metabolic health — but chemically it has nothing in common with a peptide's amino-acid chain structure. Worth saying plainly, since the labeling rarely does.

It has never been approved as a medicine, and no human has ever been studied taking it in any registered or published clinical trial.

What the studies actually found

Every study of 5-Amino-1MQ's effects is a mouse study, and nearly all of them trace back to the same research group (University of Texas Medical Branch, with the compound credited to Neelakantan and colleagues). In diet-induced obese mice, repeated dosing has been reported to dose-dependently limit weight and fat-mass gain, improve glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, reduce liver fat and liver enzyme markers, and — in one study — shift gut microbiome composition, especially when combined with a reduced-calorie diet (Neelakantan et al., 2018, Biochemical Pharmacology; Sampson et al., 2021, Scientific Reports; Dimet-Wiley et al., 2022, Scientific Reports; Babula et al., 2024, Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism).

These are consistent, reproducible findings — within mice. None of it has been tested in a person.

What exists in humans

Nothing. No clinical trial of 5-Amino-1MQ is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov under any name variant, and no published human study of any kind — not even a small case report or a Phase 1 safety trial — turned up in a search of the medical literature. This is a rarer situation than "early" human evidence; it's the complete absence of any.

What doses have been studied in humans

None. There is no human dosing data to report, because no human trial has ever been conducted.

The dosing figures that circulate on vendor websites and forums are derived entirely from the mouse studies above, in which 5-Amino-1MQ was given orally, intravenously, or subcutaneously at various milligram-per-kilogram amounts. Converting a mouse dose to a "human equivalent" using body-weight or body-surface-area scaling is a standard early-drug-development estimate of comparable exposure — it is not evidence that the resulting amount does anything, or is safe, in a person. That conversion has never been tested for this compound.

What remains unknown

Whether any of the metabolic benefits seen in mice occur in humans at all
What a safe starting point would even look like, since no human pharmacokinetic study has ever been

run

Whether the compound is absorbed, metabolized, or cleared similarly in humans as in mice
What an unregulated vial sold online actually contains, given there is no approved manufacturing

standard to compare it against

Whether any company or academic group is currently planning the first human trial

Registry and study records

Selective and membrane-permeable small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase reverse high fat diet-induced obesity in mice: PubMed · Neelakantan et al., 2018, Biochemical Pharmacology. Original description of the methylquinolinium NNMT-inhibitor series; mouse only. DOI: 10.1016/j.bcp.2017.11.007
Combined nicotinamide N-methyltransferase inhibition and reduced-calorie diet normalizes body composition and enhances metabolic benefits in obese mice: PubMed · Sampson et al., 2021, Scientific Reports. Mouse only. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-85051-6
Reduced calorie diet combined with NNMT inhibition establishes a distinct microbiome in DIO mice: PubMed · Dimet-Wiley et al., 2022, Scientific Reports. Mouse only. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-03670-5
Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase inhibition mitigates obesity-related metabolic dysfunction: PubMed · Babula et al., 2024, Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism. Dose-dependent effects and pharmacokinetics in diet-induced obese mice; mouse only. DOI: 10.1111/dom.15879

See the full Evidence Index →

Evidence last reviewed: September 2026. Peptide Proof reports what studies found. We do not give medical advice, dosing guidance, or treatment recommendations.