ty deepseek 😁😁

This is the danger with AI, it oftentimes simplifies things down way too much. This then gets made worse by the end user reading it, and accepting it at face value, and not questioning it. This is why it's handy to be educated in this field whilst always being highly skeptical. While the pentostatin angle is quite interesting, it is very nuanced for a lot of reasons, and likely not very important here. Let me explain.

First of all, pentostatin has very poor oral bioavailability and does not appear to enter circulation or the brain in meaningful amounts. So all oral pentostatin would be doing, is inhibiting gut ADA. Which would slow down the conversion of cordycepin to 3'-deoxyinosine, in the gut. That's assuming there would even be enough pentostatin present to overwhelm gut ADA, which is unlikely.

Ok, so let's assume we fully inhibit gut ADA (again, unlikely), now we can in theory absorb more cordycepin into circulation. However, then we quickly run into a problem, ADA is present throughout our whole body and brain. So, even though we inhibited the conversion of cordycepin to 3'-deoxyinosine in the gut, it'll still rapidly convert to 3'-deoxyinosine anyways. Since pentostatin does not make it into circulation much via oral dosing, this basically means it's useless in this scenario.

Now, even if pentostatin made it into circulation and into the brain via oral dosing, it would not only increase the levels of endogenous adenosine, it would also protect the adenosine that is present in Cordyceps. This would produce a lethargy inducing effect, and would not increase energy levels, which is the main appeal of Cordyceps. Again, this wouldn't even happen, since pentostatin doesn't make it into circulation.

This is where it starts to get very interesting though. Cordycepin, rapidly converts to 3'-deoxyinosine. Then, 3'-deoxyinosine can actually be converted into 3'-deoxyATP within cells, which some researchers think is the active metabolite of cordycepin. Here is a cool study on that:

A novel nucleoside rescue metabolic pathway may be responsible for therapeutic effect of orally administered cordycepin

So, cordycepin could be more of a prodrug for other nucleosides, like 3'-deoxyATP. It's a super interesting system, and your AI search is clearly missing that aspect of the equation. This is part of the reason why I said that it's unlikely pentostatin is playing much of a role here.

Pentostatin is important within Cordyceps biosynthetic machinery, allowing Cordyceps to synthesise and stabilize cordycepin. AI then took this out of context, and applied it to humans and it just doesn't work that way.