MT-1

MT-1 (Melanotan I, afamelanotide) is a synthetic 13-amino-acid analogue of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH), with two amino acids changed so that it resists breakdown by blood enzymes. It was first described in 1980 by a University of Arizona group, who found it more potent and longer-lasting than alpha-MSH in frog skin and mouse melanoma cell tests (Sawyer et al., PNAS 1980). In a randomised placebo-controlled study in 28 healthy men, it darkened the skin over the following weeks. As an implant called afamelanotide was authorised in the EU in December 2014, under exceptional circumstances, to prevent phototoxicity (light-triggered skin pain) in adults with erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP), a rare inherited condition, and in the US in 2019 for adults with EPP. These approvals rest on two randomised placebo-controlled trials in 74 and 94 patients, with funding from the developer (Langendonk et al., NEJM 2015). Outside EPP, including a randomised trial in 55 people with vitiligo, studies are small and reviews call for larger ones. Unregulated products sold as Melanotan I and II have been linked in case reports to changes in moles. These research materials are not the licensed medicine. Supplied for laboratory research use only.