Protein / target
Steroidogenic acute regulatory protein, mitochondrial
Protein at a glance
Biological role
Cholesterol transfer
Strongest disease association
Genetic Diseases, Inborn
Research activity
Emerging research
Derived from structured UniProt, Open Targets and literature data on this page.
Protein profile
Canonical identity and biological annotation from UniProt.
Function overview
Plays a key role in steroid hormone synthesis by enhancing the metabolism of cholesterol into pregnenolone.
View complete UniProt function annotationHide complete annotation
Plays a key role in steroid hormone synthesis by enhancing the metabolism of cholesterol into pregnenolone. Mediates the transfer of cholesterol from the outer mitochondrial membrane to the inner mitochondrial membrane where it is cleaved to pregnenolone
Subcellular location
Domains and Gene Ontology detail (15)Hide
Domains & features
Gene Ontology
- Cmitochondrial intermembrane space
- Cmitochondrial matrix
- Cmitochondrial outer membrane
- Cmitochondrion
- Fcholesterol binding
- Fcholesterol transfer activity
- Fmolecular carrier activity
- PC21-steroid hormone biosynthetic process
- Pcholesterol metabolic process
- Pglucocorticoid biosynthetic process
- Pintracellular cholesterol transport
- Ppositive regulation of bile acid biosynthetic process
Biological roles
What this protein does, drawn together from its UniProt function, Gene Ontology terms and Reactome pathways.
View supporting evidenceHide supporting evidence
Lipid & lipoprotein metabolism
- ·Plays a key role in steroid hormone synthesis by enhancing the metabolism of cholesterol…
- ·cholesterol binding
- ·cholesterol transfer activity
- ·cholesterol metabolic process
Concepts derived from UniProt GO Reactome — each badge above shows which sources supported that role.
Translational evidence
Why this target matters therapeutically, strongest evidence first. Disease associations are gene-level (via the gene that encodes this protein) and open into the full confidence synthesis; the development universe, tractability and safety annotations are target-level, from Open Targets.
Strongest disease associations · via encoding gene STAR
Gene-level evidence surfaced through the gene STAR that encodes this protein — not a direct protein–disease relationship. Ranked by Forefront's causal-directness weighting, so genetically- and clinically-evidenced diseases lead over ones that merely share the literature.
View evidence synthesis (2)Hide
The evidence agreement range shows how closely the independent evidence families agree — it is not a statistical confidence interval, and nothing here is fitted to outcome data. Derived from Open Targets evidence types under Forefront weighting; the per-type scores above show the calculation.
Show all associationsHide all associations
Tractability
Small molecules — Emerging
View underlying tractability evidence (2)Hide
Raw Open Targets tractability assessment buckets, by modality.
Safety-related annotations
Terms indexed against this target in Open Targets' safety data, with their datasource. These are annotations, not causal claims: the direction of effect (whether activation or inhibition is implicated), species and evidence strength are not captured here, so an entry does not mean that modulating this target is known to cause that condition.
Research activity
Papers linked directly to this protein. This is the protein's own literature — descriptor-derived papers are kept separate below.
Most cited
Recent
Europe PMC papers linked directly to this protein.