Gamma-lipotropin

Where it comes from

Made in

Pituitary and hypothalamic POMC cells

Sent out by

With the other POMC products

Acts on

• None established

What it does

• A by-product of POMC processing that holds beta-MSH in its last eighteen residues ³
• Weak fat-mobilising activity in animals, with no receptor identified for it ²
• Measurable in human blood, where it rises alongside ACTH in Addison’s disease, Nelson’s syndrome and ectopic ACTH secretion ¹

In medicine

• None; it is measured only in research assays of POMC processing, which have to separate it from beta-lipotropin because the two share its whole sequence ¹
• Its one clinical consequence is indirect, through beta-MSH, which is cut from its tail and carries a variant linked to obesity ³

Beyond the body’s own use

• No product and no trial: gamma-lipotropin is an intermediate, and interest in it is interest in what comes out of it
• What is genuinely unknown is whether it does anything itself; its reported lipotropic activity has never been tied to a receptor or confirmed in people ¹
• It is a useful marker of which route a cell took, because the pieces a cell makes depend on the processing enzymes it carries ²