Background Adolescent intermittent ethanol exposure causes long-lasting alterations in brain epigenetic mechanisms. Melanocortin and neuropeptide Y signaling interact and are affected by ethanol exposure in the brain. Here, the persistent effects of adolescent intermittent ethanol on alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone, melanocortin 4 receptor, and neuropeptide Y expression and their regulatio...

Melanocortin-1 (MC1) receptor is an attractive melanoma-specific target for the development of α-MSH peptide based imaging and therapeutic agents. In this work a new lactam bridge α-MSH analogue was synthesized and radiolabeled with 99mTc via HYNIC chelator and tricine as co-ligand. Also, stability in human serum, receptor bound internalization and tissue biodistribution in tumor bearing nude m...

Activation of central melanocortin receptors (MCR) inhibits fever, but the identity of the MCR subtype(s) mediating this antipyretic effect is unknown. To determine whether selective central melanocortin receptor-4 (MC4R) activation produces antipyretic effects, the MC4R selective agonist MRLOB-0001 (CO-His-d-Phe-Arg-Trp-Dab-NH(2)) was administered intracerebroventricularly to rats treated with...

despite a quite short early history, computational drug design and discovery methods can now be efficient in reducing costs and speeding up drug developing procedure. melanocortin-4 receptor (mc4r) is a g protein-coupled receptor implicated in the regulation of body weight. despite its clinical reputation, there is a lack of in-depth knowledge about structure and behavior of mc4r in lipid bilay...