The company has been criticized for using its advisory board to lend credibility to its product and for heavily marketing their product on social media.[11][12][2][13]
Elysium originally bought the ingredients in Basis from ChromaDex, which as of December 2016, sold the two ingredients to other supplement companies that also marketed products containing them.[2][13][14] The two companies had an agreement under which Elysium Health did not have to acknowledge ChromaDex as the source of the ingredients, but then after Elysium recruited the VP of business development from ChromaDex and reportedly stopped paying ChromaDex, ChromaDex sued Elysium and the information became public.[15]
In September 2018, Dartmouth College and ChromaDex sued Elysium for infringing on patents for nicotinamide riboside.[16] In August 2020, W.R. Grace and Company also sued Elysium for infringing on their patents for crystalline nicotinamide riboside.[17] In September 2021, the claims by Dartmouth and ChromaDex were dismissed by a U.S. district judge, essentially invalidating their patents.[18]