Protein / target
Melanocyte protein PMEL
Protein at a glance
Biological role
Identical protein binding
Strongest disease association
autoimmune disease
Therapeutic maturity
Clinically validated target
Druggability
Antibody
Clinical development
1 approved · 1 in clinical development
Derived from structured UniProt, Open Targets and literature data on this page.
Protein profile
Canonical identity and biological annotation from UniProt.
Function
Forms physiological amyloids that play a central role in melanosome morphogenesis and pigmentation. The maturation of unpigmented premelanosomes from stage I to II is marked by assembly of processed amyloidogenic fragments into parallel fibrillar sheets, which elongate the vesicle into a striated ellipsoidal shape. In pigmented stage III and IV melanosomes, the amyloid matrix serves as a platform where eumelanin precursors accumulate at high local concentrations for pigment formation. May prevent pigmentation-associated toxicity by sequestering toxic reaction intermediates of eumelanin biosynthesis pathway
Subcellular location
Domains and Gene Ontology detail (15)Hide
Domains & features
Gene Ontology
- Ccis-Golgi network membrane
- Cendoplasmic reticulum
- Cendoplasmic reticulum membrane
- Cextracellular exosome
- CGolgi apparatus
- Cmelanosome
- Cmelanosome membrane
- Cmultivesicular body membrane
- Cmultivesicular body, internal vesicle
- Cplasma membrane
- Fidentical protein binding
- Pmelanin biosynthetic process
Biological roles
What this protein does, drawn together from its UniProt function, Gene Ontology terms and Reactome pathways.
View underlying pathways (1)Hide underlying pathways
Concepts derived from UniProt GO Reactome — each badge above shows which sources supported that role.
Interaction neighbourhood
Proteins with the strongest functional or physical association. Node size and line weight reflect STRING confidence; hover or select a partner to inspect one association.
Functional and physical associations from STRING v12.0. Only associations with this protein are drawn — partner-to-partner links are not part of this evidence.
Drugs targeting this protein
Whether each drug engages this protein directly or through a complex, and how many other targets are recorded for it. Direct binders with few recorded targets are listed first.
Melanocyte protein PMEL binding agent
Appears in clinical studies involving gastric cancer, uveal cancer, neoplasm, melanoma
ChEMBL mechanism, action type and target identity. Open Targets clinical status and indications.
Translational evidence
Why this target matters therapeutically — disease associations, drugs in development, tractability and safety, from Open Targets.
Strongest genetic associations
Human genetic evidence — the most direct causal link between this target and a disease.
Highest-confidence therapeutic associations
Diseases where a drug acting on this target has already reached clinical development.
Highest overall evidence
Remaining associations by Open Targets' aggregated evidence score.
Show all associationsHide all associations
Open Targets ranks 851 associations for this target and we store the top 10 by aggregated score. The long tail is largely literature co-mention and RNA-expression evidence, not evidence that this target drives those diseases.
Known drugs · 2 total
gastric cancer · uveal cancer · neoplasm
melanoma
Tractability
Clinical trials
Trials of drugs that target this protein — reached indirectly through those drugs, so a trial listed here studies the drug, not the protein.
Show remaining trials (4)Hide
ClinicalTrials.gov via the drug-target graph.
Forefront confidence
Our own weighting of the evidence behind each disease association. Human genetics and clinical evidence count for most; literature co-mention counts for little, because two entities sharing an abstract is not evidence that one drives the other.
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 underlying per-type scores are shown above so the calculation can be checked.
What's happening now
Recent activity around this target, drawn from one canonical event stream. Every item is reached through a drug that targets this protein, so each event is news about that drug rather than about the protein directly.
- New publicationThree-Year Overall Survival with Tebentafusp in Metastatic Uveal Melanoma.
- Regulatory approval
Approval: Kimmtrak (EMA)
- New publicationOverall Survival Benefit with Tebentafusp in Metastatic Uveal Melanoma.
Objective event titles are shown unmodified; the event kind and significance line are derived from structured fields. Forefront AttentionEvent stream aggregating Europe PMC Regulatory filings ClinicalTrials.gov.