Ligands to the melanocortin receptors

This review will give a brief overview of the pharmacology of the melanocortin receptors (MCRs) as a background. The review will not handle the patents or patent applications dealing with cloning of the different subtypes of the receptor, since this has been recently reviewed [1]. This review will focus on different ligands acting either as agonists or antagonists to the different subtypes of the receptor, i.e., MC1R, MC3R, MC4R and MC5R. Just recently a number of patent applications have reached the public domain, which describe small peptides or low molecular weight organic compounds binding and acting on the MCRs.