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Cyclic heptapeptide · melanocortin agonist
A cyclic lactam heptapeptide analogue of alpha-MSH, engineered to resist the proteases that clear the linear hormone. Supplied as a lyophilized powder for research purposes only.
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Tested lot by lot at ≥99% purity. The Janoshik certificate for your lot is emailed with the order.
Everything Valtrax Research ships is bench material for in-vitro work. None of it is a drug, a supplement, a cosmetic, or a medical device, and none of it is intended for human or animal use, ingestion, or administration. Placing an order is your confirmation that you are a qualified researcher buying for lawful research, under every Canadian law and regulation that applies to you.
Take the active core of α-MSH, shorten it, and close it into a lactam ring. The ring is the engineering: it defeats the proteases that take the linear hormone apart in minutes, and in doing so leaves a compact, durable agonist. Melanotan II does not pick a melanocortin subtype — it activates the receptor family broadly.
That lack of selectivity is, on the bench, the feature. MC1R governs pigmentation, MC4R sits in feeding and central circuits, MC3R falls between them — and a single stable agonist lets one preparation reach across several of those arms at once instead of needing a separate ligand for each.
Two distinct lines run side by side. One is pharmacological: the broad agonism itself, split between MC1R pigmentation and MC4R central effects on feeding and behaviour, the latter often probed by direct CNS microinjection. The other is synthetic: the cyclic scaffold treated as a model substrate to validate new macrocyclization and stapling chemistry.
Broad receptor activity is what makes MT-II useful as a multi-target probe: it engages MC1R, MC3R, MC4R, and MC5R rather than one. Pigmentation work routes through MC1R; the central studies — feeding behaviour, the accumbens microinjection experiments — route through MC4R.
Recent papers fall into two camps. On the chemistry side, Todorovic and Yue use MT-II as a substrate for new macrocyclization and stapling routes. On the pharmacology side, Eliason and Wekwejt track its central effects — appetite, memory — in rodent preparations.
The compound originated in Hadley and Hruby’s α-MSH analogue program at Arizona, where cyclizing the active core was the decisive step — it converted a fragile hormone into something stable and potent. From that lead two branches diverged: a selective, MC1R-leaning analogue (afamelanotide) and the broad agonist here.
What MT-II became is a reference point. It serves both as a fixture in melanocortin pharmacology and, increasingly, as a model substrate that synthetic-chemistry groups reach for when they need to test a new peptide-cyclization method.
Liu, H. et al. (2024). Therapeutic Strategies Against Metabolic Imbalance in a Male Mouse Model With 5-HT2CR Loss-of-Function.
PubMedTodorovic, M. et al. (2024). 5-Hydroxypyrroloindoline Affords Tryptathionine and 2,2′-bis-Indole Peptide Staples: Application to Melanotan-II.
PubMedWekwejt, P. et al. (2023). Melanotan-II reverses memory impairment induced by a short-term HF diet.
PubMedEliason, N.L. et al. (2022). Melanocortin receptor agonist melanotan-II microinjected in the nucleus accumbens decreases appetitive and consumptive responding for food.
PubMedYue, W.K. et al. (2023). Targeting Melanocortin Receptors Using SNAr-Type Macrocyclization: A Doubly Orthogonal Route to Cyclic Peptide Conjugates.
PubMedIndependent testing lot by lot: identity, purity, net content. The certificate arrives by email with your order.
Janoshik Analytical, a laboratory Valtrax does not own, runs the testing — identity by mass spectrometry, purity by RP-HPLC at ≥99%. The certificate covering the lot you receive is also emailed with your order.
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