Melittin (synthetic)

Melittin is a cationic, haemolytic component of honey bee venom used to study cell and liposome lysis. Melittin is a positively charged, amphipathic 26-amino-acid peptide that associates with the phospholipids of membrane bilayers, causing cell death by forming transmembrane toroidal pores at nanomolar concentrations. Melittin also inhibits Gs and stimulates Gi activity, inhibits protein kinase C and cAMP-dependent protein kinases and is a Na+/K+ ATPase inhibitor. Melittin has antitumoural effects in multiple cancer types, and can induce potent and highly selective cell death in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) enriched breast carcinoma, with negligible effects on normal cells. We also offer melittin with a C-terminal cysteine at the C-terminal. This allows melittin to be labelled with any maleimide linked tag, allowing fluorescent labelling or biotinylation. Please contact us for any further details of these services.