Researchers made mouse melanoma cells produce the human skin‑pigment receptor, showing it works and can trigger melanin production on its own, but the study is just a lab model and doesn’t give any tips for using melanotan‑I in people.

Stable expression of the MSH receptor in a homologous system is important for the study of the function and mechanism of signalling of this receptor. This is the first report on the stable expression of the human alpha-MSH receptor in the mouse melanoma G4F clone which lacks an endogenous MSH receptor. Several stable transfectant cell lines were obtained all of which express the human MSH receptor in high numbers. Human MSH receptor mRNA expression was detected by Northern blot analysis. Competition binding experiments showed that the MSH receptors expressed in these cells have the same affinity for [Nle4,D-Phe7]-alpha-MSH as the MSH receptors of the human HBL melanoma cell line. Several of the transfectant cell lines produced melanin constitutively, some of them secreting melanin into the medium whereas other clones did not secrete melanin. MSH and cholera toxin did not or only marginally increase melanogenesis in these clones, and forskolin had an opposite effect. These results suggest that the human MSH receptor may be constitutively active in these transfected mouse melanoma cells.